Vlad reunites with his sidekick

NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images

Autocrats rejoice! The nasty spat between Russia and Belarus—so disheartening to those longing for a Soviet revival—has been patched up. Belarus gets cheap gas, and Russia gets support against American missile defense. (Still, revanchists didn't get everything they wanted: there had been speculation that Putin would announce a Russia-Belarus "union state", with Putin as its president.)