I don't think Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump really have friends. But Trump has openly admired Putin for many years, with no reservations. He even seems to idolize him. Neither his cabinet appointees nor the civil servants in the Pentagon and the State Department feel the same way, however, so we don't know what this admiration will bring.
Anne ApplebaumHigh national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain.
Anne ApplebaumNavalny is a blogger-turned-activist, but he finds stuff and he puts together these very, very clever, very high production value videos which underline the corruption at the top of the system, and there are millions of people who watch them. Some people think he must have some kind of protection inside the system because he hasn't yet been completely put out of commission; he's allowed to go on. He himself has said he wants to run for president.
Anne ApplebaumThe Soviet Union was, by the 1970s and 1980s, relatively stable and predictable. Putin's Russia is much more volatile. Nuclear policy is really in the hands of one person, or a small group of people, instead of a huge party-state apparatus. The possibility of a mistake is greater now.
Anne ApplebaumDonald Trump has never tried to reach out to all the American people, he never uses the language of unity, he doesn't try to charm or persuade. He just says, thanks to the people who voted for me and the rest of you are losers.
Anne ApplebaumKhodorkovsky is richest man. And he lost everything when Putin arrested him and took his company away, and essentially took his company away, sold it, and gave it to other people, and enriched them. So, he's a complicated figure as an opposition leader, and people admire him - he was in prison, and he was very brave, and he's written some good things since then, and so on. But at the end of the day, people see him as being part of the corrupt system that has done so much to undermine the Russian system since the 1990s, and I don't know that he can ever be a really popular leader.
Anne Applebaum