Peace on earth doesn’t look very likely any time soon

By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

They don’t make world leaders like they used to, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned. Talking to a Kremlin-friendly gathering of journalists at his traditional end-of-year press conference earlier today, the Russian president spoke with fond nostalgia of the old gang, saying he’d like to spend more time with “people close to me”, such as the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, the former French president Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi, late prime minister of Italy. High office aside, these men have another thing in common: they are all now dead.

Whether this was Putin’s way…

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