"Putin, thief! Putin, thief!" chanted the protesters who marched through Moscow as Vladimir Putin sought his third term as president. Since then the rallies have ended. Russia's swift annexation of Crimea and its subsequent proxy-war in the south-east of Ukraine have turned Mr Putin into a national hero in the eyes of many Russians, including some former protesters. But they have also led to Western sanctions against Mr Putin's cronies, and focused attention once more on the issue of theft and corruption, which is the subject of a new book by Karen Dawisha, a political scientist at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
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