Did you have a good week?

Hopefully yes, but was it a great week, like the one that Vladimir Putin just had?

As Russia’s president, Putin oversees a third-rate economy saddled with a shrinking population, aging workforce and rampant government corruption — but as he gazed beyond his country’s borders this week, he must have been tickled pink.

Well beyond his wildest dreams, Putin saw signs that the liberal Western democracies he loathes so much are creeping closer to political collapse.

In the United Kingdom, the government suffered the most devastating parliamentary defeat in modern British history as it failed once again to figure out a viable Brexit plan. This increases the prospect of economic catastrophe if the U.K. leaves the European Union at the end of March, as scheduled, without an agreement.

And in the United States, the longest government shutdown in American history continued into its fifth week with increasing disruption but no sign of compromise. Donald Trump remained infatuated with his border wall and the increasingly emboldened Democrats continued to say no.

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Not surprisingly, Putin’s fingerprints were all over this week’s events.

In recent years, he has tried to avenge the shame of the Soviet Union’s humiliating collapse by reasserting Russian power and undermining competing Western democracies. “Job well done,” he can assure himself this weekend.

As British politicians floundered to make sense of the idiocy of the narrow 2016 pro-Brexit referendum result, there was increasing evidence that loopholes in the country’s campaign finance laws allowed secret Russian money to boost the pro-Brexit vote.

Given that, was it surprising that Putin spoke out last month in support of Prime Minister Theresa May, as if he was an impassioned democrat? “The referendum was held,” he said. “What can she do? She has to fulfil the will of the people.”

As for America’s current drama, Putin’s role is proving to be far more insidious.

Although Trump still denies it, it is now widely accepted that Russian intelligence, conspiring with many of his senior campaign aides, and probably including Trump himself, worked to rig the presidential election is his favour.

But this week will be remembered in U.S. political history for other reasons. It was the week when — incredibly — a president was actually asked whether he “worked for Russia” and he was compelled to reply: “I never worked for Russia … it’s a disgrace that you asked this question … It’s all a big, fat hoax.”

Of course, it hasn’t been a hoax, but there are key questions still to be answered: Has Trump has been a willing Russian asset, or simply a dupe? And how will Americans ultimately navigate their country through this dangerous constitutional crisis.

The breaking point in the United States is not far off. A sign of that pressure emerged toward the end of this week when the influential American magazine The Atlantic released the cover story in its new issue — with the headline “The Case for Impeachment.”

Written by senior editor Yoni Appelbaum, it argued that Trump’s actions are “an attack on the very foundations of constitutional democracy” that can only be resolved through the process of impeachment.

In Britain, for its part, there were increasing calls for a second referendum on Brexit as polls suggested that a majority of Britons now wants to remain in the European Union.

But there is no clear way out of their political stalemate.

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The U.K. seems like “a country lost and adrift,” unable to understand its own history with the rest of Europe, wrote columnist Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian.

“This has been Britain’s European story, repeatedly seeing what was a project of peace, designed to end centuries of bloodshed, as a scam designed to swindle the Brits of their money.”

In Russia, meanwhile, Vladimir Putin simply watches and waits.

Tony Burman, formerly head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, is a freelance contributor for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: , formerly head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, is a freelance contributor for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyBurman

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