Putin in the public glare

Putin is shrewd at exploiting the power of the media and combines political grandstanding with more image conscious messages, says Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform in London. "You can either give a speech or strip your shirt off and stand in a river, he does both," she said. "He strikes me very much as the second leader of the media age, because Gorbachev was very media savvy as well. He also realised that images speak more than a thousand words," says Barysch.