Every new man in the Kremlin enjoys a honeymoon with the West. And in each case that is followed by bitter disillusion: Mikhail Gorbachev caved in to Kremlin hardliners and proved pitifully ineffective; Yeltsin succumbed to alcohol and the corruption of his cronies; Mr Putin turned into a menacing autocrat. How long before we learn our lesson?

Now Dmitri Medvedev, Mr Putin’s handpicked successor, has charmed the west with his talk of freedom and legality.

But keep the cork in the shampanskoye. The “stealing machine” created by the hard men in the Kremlin in the past eight years, which loots Russia’s natural resources and shovels money to the West, is not going to disappear overnight. Remember that Mr Medvedev’s spent eight years at the helm of “Kremlin Inc (Gas Division)” alias Gazprom, which epitomizes the overlap between business and politics that he affects to dislike.

Nor is there any sign that Mr Medvedev will change Russia’s prickly relations with the west, and its bullying stance towards former captive nations such as Georgia. His supporters stress that he likes rock music and spending time on the internet. But such clues are easily spun into an illusory but comforting blanket of good intentions. Those who have met Mr Medvedev speak of a pedantic, querulous figure, a nervous nitpicker ill-at-ease with the limelight. He has described America as a “financial terrorist” for seeking to impose its accounting standards on the rest of the world.

He may change. I remember how Mr Putin became prime minister in 1999, looking more like Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter than a future world leader. Many thought the third-rate spy with a taste for gutter slang would last months, not years.

How wrong they were. But Mr Putin had only the Yeltsin clan to deal with, whose only aim was to stay out of jail. Mr Medvedev must work alongside Mr Putin, constitutionally his junior as prime minister, but his superior in personality and real power.

It is hard to see a change of course. The Russian people delight in the stability and high living standards that the past eight years has brought. They are pleased too that their country is respected (or at least feared) by its neighbors. A muzzled, sycophantic media disguises the corrupt, threadbare record of the Putin years: colossal corruption, symbolic public services, crumbling infrastructure, soaring inflation, grotesque abuse of power, sprawling bureaucracy, and overweening state intervention in the economy.

Nor is there much to worry about abroad. The bullying of Georgia has brought only the most ineffectual bleats of protest from the European Union and NATO. Germany’s cosy ties with Russia have created a Trojan Horse in the heart of the West. Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy and Nicolas Sarkozy’s France adopt the same stance: gladly accepting the riches of trade with Russia, while ignoring the political cost. America and Britain are too distracted. Only Lithuania, one of the smallest and poorest countries in Europe, is bravely challenging the consensus, insisting that the EU toughens its stance before starting talks with the Kremlin. Every other country—even Poland–is too scared or too greedy to speak out. As the grim military parade of tanks and nuclear missiles rumbles towards Red Square, the corks are popping in the Kremlin.