Considering the provenance of Putin's sanctioned friends' fortunes, made mostly on vastly inflated government contracts, Russian taxpayers have already paid for their villas, hotels and luxury condos. Now, they will have to pay a second time: European countries and the U.S. probably have much less government property in Russia than the Putin cronies have foreign assets. The Russian government, however, doesn't really consider ordinary citizens as taxpayers, as political commentator Stanislav Belkovsky recently pointed out.

"Our government is its own taxpayer," he wrote. "It sells oil, gas and other minerals, and it distributes the proceeds to the population according to how valuable they are within the current system of power.

"Russians, who have acquiesced in Putin's external aggression and intolerance of internal dissent, are no more than serfs, expected to accept whatever their lord tells them in the name of the all-powerful state.

A prominent member of the Putin elite, Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin, recently suggested in the government-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta that the abrupt abolition of serfdom in 1861 may have been a mistake. "Despite all its drawbacks, serfdom was the brace holding together the nation's internal unity," he wrote. "It was no accident that, according to historians, the peasants told their former masters after the reform: 'We were yours and you were ours.

'"Zorkin's historical ruminations are no accident. Before Russia annexed Crimea and became a de-facto pariah state, membership in the international community restrained the Putin elite, forcing it to show at least superficial respect for human dignity. Now, it's no longer necessary, and Russian citizens are being openly treated as property of the state. The government has already confiscated part of their pension savings to finance Crimea and is now about to scrap the $10,800 subsidy paid out to mothers who give birth to a second or third child.

David Fuller's view

Is it any wonder that countries formerly in the Soviet Union’s iron grip do not want to have anything to due with Putin’s rule? 

Currently, Putin’s biggest worry is his security, which is why he needs to keep the oligarchs sweet, at least those who do not rock his political boat.  Putin is under pressure from sanctions and particularly the recent weakness of Brent crude oil, and this is reflected by Russia’s stock market performance.