The Russian president went up to the brink — and then, with the eyes of the world upon him, stepped back from it.
State television images on Friday showed Russian forces that had amassed near Ukraine — sparking fears of an imminent full-scale war in Europe — being loaded onto trains and ships to be pulled back. The same day, imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny announced he was ending his three-week hunger strike because his demands for independent medical care had been, at last, sufficiently met.
The performative blend of fear, suspense and force that President Vladimir Putin deploys to affirm his power reached a crescendo this week, illuminating the ever-harder-line tactics to which he is prepared to resort in order to cement and project his influence. Yet it also became clear by Friday that Putin saw the anxiety he was able to induce at home and abroad as a tool to be modulated depending on changing circumstances or in the service of a broader aim.