The bromance between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been discussed in the US media all year. Putin praised Trump early in his election campaign, and Trump has been returning the compliment ever since.

The connection between those two was described by The New Yorker editor David Remnick as a “humid political embrace”. Remnick says it is a matter of kindred temperament and in fact the two men, despite their vastly dissimilar background, reveal remarkable similarities in attitudes, interests and styles. Writing in the New York Review of Books Timothy Snyder stated that “Putin is the real-world version of the person Trump pretends to be on television.”