Fred Hiatt has an opinion column in the Washington Post today entitled “The Gymnast and the Czar,” which makes light of the damaging effect of Russia’s creeping authoritarianism on emerging democracies in the post-Soviet sphere, and the refusal of the West to recognize these problems for fear of upsetting the entitled in Moscow:

It is no longer controversial to note that Putin “has led Russia into a harsh brand of authoritarianism with some fascist features,” as French scholar Pierre Hassner said in a speech last fall. But it’s worth recalling the methodical and patient way he crept toward dictatorship, because recent events raise fears that he is now creeping in the same way toward stifling the independence that Russia’s neighboring states have enjoyed since the Soviet Union fractured in 1991.