To flourish Russia needed a Gorbachev dynasty. Instead it got Putin

All the glowing tributes to the life of Mikhail Gorbachev who has died at the age of 91 cannot hide the fact that despite his famous perestroika policy, opening up Russia, giving the Russian people a real taste of democracy and of course helping to end the Cold War, he failed to prevent the rise and rise of Vladimir Putin. After all the good he did for Russia and for all of us, there was apparently no way of stopping someone like Putin with his background in espionage and links to Russia's darkest forces from becoming president and putting the whole country under his thumb. Gorbachev shed light on and in a country which had hated and feared the West for decades and made it possible to have sensible and historic negotiations with President Reagan to remove for ever, we thought and hoped, the danger of nuclear Armaggedon. But here we are in 2022 with Putin in charge for as long as he wants, a war in Ukraine which potentially could develop into a third world war and irresponsible talk in the Kremlin about usable nuclear weapons. Gorbachev's body has yet to be lowered into a grave but he will soon be turning in it.