To be sure, Putin’s back-catalogue of carefully staged and lovingly photographed action man antics, from the bare-chested horseback riding to the deliberate use of gangster slang, all do speak to a certain overcompensation.

Likewise, while there is indeed a certain gendering of political leadership impulses, anyone who remembers Margaret Thatcher pushing her often uncertain cabinet into war over the Falklands, knows that things are never so cut and dried.

Those who may be tempted to assume Russian women are all icons of gentleness ought to ask Maria Zakharova, the pugnacious foreign ministry spokeswoman who slams western governments as having ‘neo-Nazi preferences’. Or Catherine the Great, who conquered and colonised the lands of Novorossia – which just happens to be where Russian troops are fighting today.