I was running late to meet friends last night and decided to splash out the hundred rubles (about 3 euro) that I had just found in my pocket on a taxi into town so I would get there faster. Just before we got into the centre we hit a traffic jam, not unusual at any time in Moscow. What was unusual was the fact that ten minutes later we hadn't moved an inch. I was sitting in the back of the car knowing that as soon as I got out of the car the traffic would start moving but I was so late to meet my friends that I eventually had to hop out and walk. As I came to Pushkin Square, the intersection of six of the busiest roads in Moscow I saw that traffic police had stopped all the traffic from all directions and were even keeping pedestrians from crossing the road. At this stage I had resigned myself to being very late, the temptation to run whooping across the deserted square was huge but the police shoot to kill here so I refrained and waited to see what all the fuss was about. A few minutes later about 15 blacked out mercs, hummers and police cars all with sirens going came speeding up one road, made an illegal u-turn and sped away. This was followed by another cavalcade of expensive german-made cars, one of which had a russian flag on its bumper and the roads were quiet again, apart from the honking of the irate drivers who had been at a standstill for more than 15 minutes. It was Mr Putin, heading home after a long day of limiting free speech and selling oil. It's quite the phenomenal party trick 'hey look guys, I can stop traffic!' It would almost make me want to run for office and just spend the day driving around disrupting traffic...