After testing the world's limits, Putin steps back from the brink

The performative blend of fear, suspense and force that President Vladimir V. Putin deploys to affirm his power crescendoed this week, illuminating the ever-harder-line tactics to which he is prepared to resort to cement and project his influence. Yet it also became clear by Friday that Mr. 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. It was a distillation, in short, of Mr. Putin’s tactical, high-stakes rule that evokes his past as an officer in the K.G.B.: keeping the adversary guessing and off balance, while also being prepared to exercise restraint as long as he can save face. “This is theater, in part,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a former top adviser to Mr. Putin, referring to the week’s drama. “But it is theater that is important for our system.”