Starting two years ago Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop made a special study of Russian leader Vladimir Putin as he ratcheted up Russia's involvement in the war in Syria. From that time, she says, "Russia dealt itself into the global power play."
Just 13 days ahead of the inauguration of Donald Trump as US President, Putin looms large over US – and global – politics.
As a transactional politician flowing from his days as a deal-making realtor, Trump is keen to do deals with Putin, ranging from a "cooling off" in hot spots like the Ukraine and the Baltic states, to co-operation in the fight against the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
But even some members of Trump's own side in Congress are alarmed at the prospect of the US getting so close to a former KGB officer with an ice-cold stare and tendency to rub out opposition figures while dismissing them as "snot".
Senator John McCain, the Republican Party's Presidential candidate in 2008, calls the Russian President "a thug and a murderer and a killer and a KGB agent". McCain's Republican Senate colleague, Lindsey Graham, said on Thursday: "Putin's up to no good and he better be stopped."
Senator Graham was speaking during a Congressional hearing into the conclusion of US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, that Russian cyber spies hacked into the computers of the Democratic Party during the recent election campaign, oversaw the leaking of material damaging to the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and set about influencing the result.
Debate about the impact of this reportedly Russian-directed hacking program will rage for years. But the fact is that Trump, an outspoken Putin fan and the clear Russian favourite, won. His victory has proved to be just one more feather in the cap of a Russian President who, as Bishop puts it, is "a very determined leader who sees Russia as having a significant global role".
At a time of so much change, where yesterday's certainties are trampled underfoot, and where forecasting has never been more hazardous, Australian foreign policy bureaucrats, academics and media specialists tend to focus on the local implications of the Trump presidency's approach to future US-China relations.
Ranging over issues like Trump's threat to start a trade war with China, to his questioning of the One China policy, to uncertainty about Trump's future handling of China's belligerent approach, to contested claims over international waters in the South China Sea, Australia's regional preoccupations are understandable.
However, as Bishop understands, it's not only "clear that he [Putin] wishes to restore Russia to being a global power again" but "strategically he's been able to do that".
At first sight, Putin's emergence on the world stage makes little sense. Russia may be the world's second biggest nuclear power – a legacy from its days as the centre of the former Soviet Union's Cold War nuclear competition with the US. But it has a struggling economy, particularly for such a huge, minerals-rich country.
Statistics about the Russian economy vary widely, according to the source. Winston Churchill described the country as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma".
The country of 143 million people exports massive amounts of oil, gas, minerals and forest products, and has a land mass almost twice the size of the next biggest, but its economy is handicapped. According to the IMF, Russia's share of global nominal GDP is less than 1.7 per cent, fractionally above that of Australia.
During Putin's first presidency, a global oil price surge starting in 2000 meant living standards increased by up to 160 per cent. But the more recent oil price slump and the impact of global sanctions since Russia seized the Crimea from Ukraine triggered an economic slump in 2015, and further contraction last year.
Notwithstanding two years of negative GDP growth, there is one part of the Russian economy which is thriving.
Julian Cooper from Birmingham University in the UK says the defence sector under Putin enjoys a position of extraordinary privilege.
In a recent report Cooper shows the military's special status dates back centuries and now underpins Russia's continuation as the world's second most powerful military power after the US.
Although the world has been focused on Russia's cyber warfare abilities in recent months, its growing physical firepower should not be overlooked. The bombing of Aleppo is just a fraction of what Moscow is capable of.
From the outset, Cooper acknowledges that statistics on, say, the share of the private sector in the Putin-led Russian economic system are "unsatisfactory and contradictory". But the state sector has expanded since Putin rose to power, meaning the President can more directly impose his strategic priorities, especially projecting Russian power on a global scale.
Hugely profitable, oligarch-run, semi-monopolies operating with extensive state patronage are obliged under Putin to make enormous contributions to the state-run defence sector, Cooper writes.
"These companies are usually highly profitable and as a matter of course, in the name of 'corporate social responsibility,' are generous in their funding of various social and cultural projects and, it is generally believed, are willing to fund political initiatives (like, say, defence industries) of the government on the understanding that this will ensure a supportive stance by the state towards their corporate activities."
This political-military-industrial complex is cemented by overt party political ties. Cooper argues "a large proportion of defence industry enterprise directors are members of the ruling 'party of power', United Russia, just as in the past they were invariably members of the Communist Party".
As the French say, the more things change the more they stay the same.
