I wouldn't place much stock in numbers. I don't believe that they reflect Putin's true popularity. Just think about how the pollsters proceed. They call people and they ask them questions on the street. In today's Russia, it takes a lot of courage to tell a stranger something critical about the head of the Kremlin. And yet more than 20 percent do so nonetheless.

With each success the ability to change is reduced. My longtime friend and coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly compared it to being dipped in bronze. Each victory added another coat.

The Soviet Union tried to sell a set of ideas, very left wing, and focus on so-called peace. Vladimir Putin doesn't care who helps him to push his agenda. He is equally comfortable with the politics of Nigel Farage and Corbyn in Britain, Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France. Whether far left or nationalist, he doesn't care, as long as they support chaos and destruction and the undermining of existing institutions.

All experiments that are related to the games when you have humans versus machines in the games - whether it's chess or "Go" or any other game - machines will prevail not because they can solve the game. Chess is mathematically unsolvable. But at the end of the day, the machine doesn't have to solve the game. The machine has to win the game. And to win the game, it just has to make fewer mistakes than humans. Which is not that difficult since humans are humans and vulnerable, and we don't have the same steady hand as the computer.

I tried to come up with a definition of this new paradigm in six articles entitled "Russia after Putin." I would consider Russia's integration into Europe the most important element of this strategy.

If we look at statistical data, we see that Protestant countries in terms of economic development are more successful than those observing Catholicism.

Losing can persuade you to change what doesn't need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster.