With Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine well into its attritional phase, Western aid to Kyiv seems to be drying up. No clear strategy at all, it seems, has been found for dealing with the Russian leader. Some hope internal divisions at the Kremlin will lead to a collapse, others that an anti-Ceausescu-style uprising – as in Romania in 1989, culminating in the leader’s brutal execution by his people – will miraculously give the coup de grace to the president’s ambitions. Certainly, if Putin were to rule in a genuinely authoritarian manner, either of these things could happen. But up to now he’s been far too wily and flexible for that.

‘Russia is basically North Korea these days, isn’t it?’ a British friend asked recently. As the Kremlin flings out its laws and eliminates competitors – sometimes physically – you could be forgiven for thinking so. But actually there are many differences.

A system like North Korea’s is defined by state control of its citizens – not only their political or professional activities but also family and sex life too. True, Putin in the past few months has made steps in this direction – criminalising LGBT+ as ‘an extremist organisation’, laying the groundwork for an abortion-ban, and urging Russia’s women to have ‘eight or more children’. But in a country whose average birth rate is 1.5 and where rock bottom salaries make paying for even one child a challenge, he must realise this is pure fantasy. This isn’t to say standards of living are similar in the two countries either. Russia has fossil fuels to sell, North Korea does not, and while the latter’s citizens are, according to UN estimates, at growing risk of starvation, every other Russian, say the Ministry of Health, is overweight.

Russia is thus very different from the classic model of a repressive regime

Then there’s the relationship between people and leader. In North Korea, citizens are obliged to shriek their enthusiasm for Kim Jong-un on a regular basis, but in Russia political apathy’s much the safer option. A kind of sullen, wary standoff between state and public prevails in Russia – unsurprising, perhaps, when you consider the country’s revolutionary past. Displays of loyalty are only for election days and overdoing it (e.g. taking the current war too seriously) can land you in very hot water (see the fates of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and pro-war blogger Igor Girkin, one murdered, one banged up in jail).

Attitudes to censorship differ too. North Koreans caught with CDs or USBs from abroad are, it’s reported, now eligible for a death sentence, and for ordinary citizens the internet is banned. Yet in Russia, 20 per cent of published books are still written by foreign authors, and despite a recently proposed crackdown, many titles from dissident émigrés remain on sale in Russian bookshops. Although there were plans afoot last year, according to the head of one printing house, to issue the books of ‘foreign agents’ and opposition figures in opaque, forbidding black covers, the plan came to nothing – under sanctions, basic materials for said covers were nowhere to be found.

Despite recent state-attempts in Russia to block VPNs, or virtual private networks, internet-use has changed very little since the beginning of the war. People have simply switched to alternative VPN providers, a case of the fabled Russian tradition for finding a way round things. According to polls, about a quarter of Russian citizens are using them and in reality the number’s probably even higher. A universally accessible internet, the Kremlin seems to realise, is key to the country’s smooth functioning. Without it, not only would people be unable to access basic services online, they would also, crucially, have dangerous amounts of free time on their hands as well.

Russia is thus very different from the classic model of a repressive regime. Rather, it’s a hybrid state, combining not only totalitarian and democratic traits, but also archaic and modern ones (captured in Vladimir Sorokin’s 2006 novel The Day of the Oprichnik, in which characters bloody and primitive as Ivan the Terrible’s boyars drive round in Mercedes chattering on mobile phones). Indeed, it’s this hybrid quality that’s laid the groundwork for the state’s resilience. It allows its citizens just enough freedom for them to feel it’s ‘business as usual.’

All this is closely linked with other, recent changes in the world. Russia scholar and writer Sergey Medvedev (no relation to the former president), currently based in Prague, argues that 500 years of spreading Western civilisation are over now.  The world is splitting, he says, into zones of technological and social progress on the one hand, and ‘archaic zones’ on the other. Just as in Sorokhin’s anti-utopia, terrible hybrids between these extremes are spawned. Isis and Hamas may be cutthroats and decapitators both, but they also have iPhones and a modern media-machine behind them.

Alongside this, we’ve seen a rollback of Western influence and a decline in US domination. Images have been beamed around the world of a Capitol taken over by horn-headed right-wing radicals and a US army fleeing from Afghanistan. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has split the West ideologically, with Western universities turning a blind eye or even backing recent Hamas atrocities, and pro-Palestinian (and, it seems, anti-Western) demonstrations making delectable TV-viewing for the Kremlin and its clan.

This fragmented new world with its perverse, self-cancelling notions of right and wrong suits Putin to a tee, and Russia’s much-heralded political and economic isolation has big leaks in it. The country has, it’s reported, sold nearly all its oil above price-caps introduced by the West, the economy has remained resilient, and Putin was recently received with full fanfare by the government of Abu Dhabi. No significant anti-war movement has developed in Russia, bar a few protests by angry wives and mothers, and whatever mutinous feelings spilled out during the ill-fated Prigozhin coup in June this year, these seem to have subsided now.

Russia is making the running in Ukraine and looks set to go on doing so, particularly if the West’s resolve is faltering. Though there was much chatter in February and March 2022 about the Kremlin’s catastrophic underestimation of the West, the recent decline in aid to Ukraine gives the lie to it. No solid ‘Western Bloc’ as such exists, just a number of countries with wildly competing approaches to Russia and worrying fault-lines within their governments. Only some new catastrophic development, it seems – another country invaded, a nuclear catastrophe, the use of some unprecedented weapon – might bring the so-called ‘civilised world’ together once again.

Absent those things, some basic facts must be faced. Russia has proved agile enough to weather the storm of the last two years and, in its hybrid state, has the potential to spread more violence and turmoil in the world. New approaches by the ‘civilised world’ – sanctions have not worked – must be found to tackle this stubbornly enduring threat.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen lately, the West may well have its work cut out putting its own divided house in order. Putin’s year, unlike 2022, is ending worryingly well.