A well-known British expert on Russia, former Moscow correspondent for the London political weekly The Economist Edward Lucas urged West to finally take steps to put an end to the bloody Putin's regime in Russia.

Western suspicion of Vladimir Putin's Russia runs deep. After two terms as president followed by one term in the notionally weaker post of prime minister, he had taken Russia to the condition where "democracy has disappeared", the recently retired US defence secretary Robert Gates said. The government was "an oligarchy run by the security services", he said, according to US official cables published by WikiLeaks.