The dramatic intensity of the scene would make it stand out in any movie or piece of fiction, but it’s not fiction – it happened on Monday. Since then, all the world has seen the video of what took place. Russian President Vladimir Putin brings together his security council and asks each of its members whether they support the decision to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, located in southeastern Ukraine. It’s the turn of Sergey Naryshkin, head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, who breaks from the script and suggests that the West be given one last chance to return to the Minsk agreements, the series of international pacts signed between Russia and Ukraine to avoid war in the Donbas region of Ukraine. He suggests this could be done by giving the West a short-term ultimatum.

The video was released by the Kremlin as a fake live stream – someone spotted that the clocks did not correspond to the time – meaning there was no effort to hide the humiliation of a high-ranking chief at the hands of the Russian president. And you feel for Naryshkin, even though you don’t know the back story, because who hasn’t been put on the spot by their boss at one point in time.