IT HAS been five years since a Greek prime minister last visited Moscow in search of a handout. On that occasion, Dmitry Medvedev, then Russia’s president, bluntly told George Papandreou to go to the International Monetary Fund for help (which he did). Before setting out from Athens on April 8th, Alexis Tsipras swore that he would not be asking Vladimir Putin, the current president, for cash, even though his country’s finances are in a more parlous state now than they were in 2010. In the end, the two leaders’ meeting produced little beyond a warm atmosphere and pledges to “restart and revive” relations. Mr Tsipras welcomed a proposed Russian gas pipeline across Greece’s territory and criticised European Union sanctions, as he has before. Mr Putin pledged (not entirely credibly) to refrain from using relations with Greece to divide the EU. To observers in Athens, Mr Tsipras’s trip to Moscow was the most striking example to date of the gesture politics that the Greek government, led by the far-left Syriza party, has used to keep its approval ratings high as unemployment edges back up, banks freeze lending and Greece...
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