Putin and Xi are the Laurel and Hardy of statesmen – but it’s no laughing matter

Chinese leader Xi Jinping meets with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in March. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/AP

It must be tough, being a dictator, when your diktats are ignored, thwarted and scorned. Vladimir Putin is a sad case in point. He ordered the glorious reintegration of Ukraine into his imaginary Russian empire. What he got was an existential crisis that he couldn’t control.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, is another paramount leader with dictatorship issues. Xi presumes to exercise supreme control, channelling Mao Zedong like a card-carrying Communist party Zeus – yet repeatedly messes up. Xi’s signature tune could be the chorus to Moby’s Extreme Ways: “Then it fell apart ... Like it always does.”