Moreover there is still much uncertainty about what happens to Russia when Putin has to surrender the presidency in 2024. He remains popular among ordinary Russians, who view him as the man who brought order after the chaos of the Yeltsin years and who won back Crimea. Most people have little respect for the political class, but there is a clear distinction in their minds between Putin and the rest.

Putin has begun to address some of these problems. The increased social spending, combined with greater power for parliament and a new prime minister, should give the ruling party the shot in the arm it needs to see it through 2021.

Meanwhile, as Putin considers his own future, it is now clear that he is ready to leave the presidency in 2024. This makes Wednesday’s announcement genuinely historic, signalling the beginning of the end of 20 years of Putin rule. Yet he seems intent on finding another perch from which to exercise influence, whether in a hyped-up parliament or (following the example of the recently departed president of Kazakhstan) as head of a “State Council” in control of the crucial “power ministries” – police, intelligence, defence etc.

Will it work? In one sense, of course it will. Putin’s dominance over the Russian political system is close to complete. The deckchairs will be arranged as he chooses. But in a deeper sense, probably not. The key problems facing Russians do not lie in the allocation of powers between the president and the prime minister, but in the ability of the employees of the “power ministries” to plunder the state more or less at will. This lack of property rights and rule of law is what is truly holding the Russian economy back and fuelling steadily rising popular discontent – as exemplified in the Moscow demonstrations last summer. There are one or two tantalising hints of an effort to remedy this, but only a heroic optimist will expect them to come to fruition.