An effigy depicting Russian president Vladimir Putin is seen in Lviv. Photograph: YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP via Getty Images

The thing about dictatorships is that they always appear to be strong and incontestable until they suddenly fall and we all wonder how such regimes, woven thick with internal contradictions, ever held together for so long.…

This data comes from the ChinaPulse.com media intelligence and smart news insights monitoring platform.