There has been a notable absence from the Iran war , only occasionally rearing his head, and, even then, without much consequence: Vladimir Putin . It tells a quiet story about the state of Russian relevance under Putin, one that sits in direct contrast to the gloating of some the Kremlin’s livelier apparatchiks. Iran is cementing a truth about Putin’s Russia . For all the Kremlin’s bluster, it is now a second-order power, one shaped by events more than it shapes them. The Kremlin sells itself