Even Xi is unimpressed with Putin’s bungling autocracy

To say that Vladimir Putin is giving autocracy a bad name is rather to state the obvious. But it now appears to have dawned even on his ‘old friend’ Xi Jinping that Russian incompetence and cruelty in Ukraine is undermining their joint ambition to re-write the international order.

Putin’s admission that Beijing might have ‘concerns’ about his bungled war was cryptic but striking.