Sinophobia is embedded in the Australian DNA. Canberra’s Vietnam War follies were an early proof. Our Leftwing likes to believe that Canberra was dragged into the Vietnam war by the US. The reality was the exact opposite: Canberra, with its obsessive fear of China, helped drag Washington into that war.

At last count there was only one English speaker reporting the war from the Russian side. For this recent visitor to Moscow, Mr Putin’s war hardly seemed to exist. No soldiers are marching the streets. The TV featured endless food shows. Plaintive is not a word one would associate with