The Kremlin is bailing out the business tycoons it was once expected to curb

ANYONE watching Russian television this summer could have been forgiven for thinking that Oleg Deripaska, one of the country’s richest tycoons and the boss of Rusal, the world’s largest aluminium company, was finished. The closure of three factories, one of them owned by Mr Deripaska, in Pikalevo, a small cement-producing town near St Petersburg, had left workers without pay. In protest they had blocked the road and called for help from Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, who appeared on June 4th like a superhero in a sports jacket, with a penitent Mr Deripaska in tow. “I wanted the authors of what happened here to see it with their own eyes,” Mr Putin thundered, in a tirade beamed across Russia by state television. “You have made thousands of residents hostage to your ambition, your lack of professionalism and perhaps your greed.”

“Come here and sign,” Mr Putin instructed Mr Deripaska, pointing to an agreement to restart the factory and holding out a pen. Mr Deripaska signed. “My pen—give it back,” Mr Putin then snapped. In the inflamed imagination of Russia’s disgruntled citizens, Mr Deripaska was about to share the fate of other disgraced oligarchs such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former boss of Yukos, a dismembered oil firm, who has languished in prison for more than six years. …