President Vladimir Putin has begun his fourth term in the Kremlin with a promise to achieve “breakthroughs” in the life of ordinary Russians. Speaking at his inauguration, he pointed to his undoubted achievement, which he explained had been to revive “pride in our fatherland”. He then went on to vow to multiply “the strength and prosperity of Russia”.

He pledged to spend more on healthcare and education and to invest government funds to revive an economy, which analysts say has become stagnant. Among nine “national development goals” to be achieved at the end of his new six-year term in 2024, he listed the ambition to make Russia one of the world’s top five economies and halve the levels of poverty.

There was, however, an elephant in the Kremlin stateroom as he addressed some 5,000 guests at his swearing in. Putin has been in power, either as president or supremely powerful prime minister, for 18 years. Yet here he was pledging to make a difference in his latest term of office. What, cynics might ask, has he been doing for the last 18 years? He has certainly led Russia to reoccupy its place on the world stage but that has come at a high cost. He has poured money into the long overdue remodeling and reequipping of Russia’s decayed armed forces. The result of this substantial investment will be on show today at a major Victory Day parade through Red Square to mark the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany. Among the items of advanced military equipment on display will be a robot tank and new ground-to-air missiles, capable of destroying nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

It is Putin’s return to confrontation with the West and the return, at best, of a lukewarm if not actually the Cold War that has drained Russia’s treasury, which is reliant to a substantial degree on export earnings from oil and gas. He needs a powerful military to back his new militant world posture. Russian money has also been poured into Syria to maintain the Assad regime. The newly aggressive Kremlin, with the seizure of Crimea and the power play in eastern Ukraine, has brought on its head international sanctions. What there was in the way of a productive economy has been hobbled. On the present showing, it is hard to see how Putin can push his country up into the top five global economies. Indeed, unless there is a remarkable turnaround in his confrontation with the West, it is widely predicted that his economy will continue to wallow in the doldrums. As the Soviet Union discovered to its ultimately fatal cost, it cannot compete with the rest of the world without international finance and investment. In his 18 years of power, Putin has sent foreign investors running for the exits. Although the current international sanctions are not crippling, they make it impossible for any real economic recovery to be brought about.

Yet Putin seems caught up in his carefully cultivated image as the strong leader that Russians seem to favor. A sign of this is the abandonment of his bulletproof Mercedes for a brand new Russian built limousine, called the Cortege. It seems to have been lost on Kremlin that the word “cortege” is now, more often than not, used in connection with funerals.