Vladimir Putin has spent thousands of words in Russian newspapers setting out a manifesto ahead of the presidential poll next month that, despite the protests against him, he is still all but certain to win. Yet the task facing Russia can be summed up in one word – heard often, though with little real effect, from the country’s current president but more rarely from

Mr Putin himself: modernisation.

Modernisation requires far more than overhauling Russia’s creaking, resource-dominated economy. It means, above all else, replacing the arbitrary and often corrupt rule of the Kremlin and local bureaucracies with the rule of law, reinforced by the checks and balances of a modern democracy. Russia faces numerous handicaps in making that transition – in its history, its culture, its mind-boggling vastness. But with nominal output per capita topping $13,000 last year, it is at the level where many other countries have achieved it.