If you haven’t already read it, there’s no better time than now to catch up with Peter Pomerantsev’s brilliant portrait of Putin’s Russia, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (Faber & Faber), which won last year’s RSL Ondaatje Prize for a book “evoking the spirit of a place”. Pomerantsev, who worked in television in Russia, was  told by producers: “The news is the incense by which we bless Putin’s actions.” Judging by his behaviour the other day — no, every day — the president-elect of the United States is expecting the same benediction from journalists there.