There are few who can claim to know Vladimir Putin.
Politics is a taboo subject for Russians and in Valdai — home to around 14,000 people, if the country's unreliable population stats are to be believed — that's the case.
"You must remember that discretion is one of the main security measures around Putin," says Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert and honorary professor at University College London.
Beneath that strongman image sit claims today's Putin is far less impressive: an ailing, isolated philanderer who relies on a team of body doubles to keep up public propaganda appearances.
Putin doesn't spend as much time as he used to in Valdai, once believed to be his favourite home among the 20-odd he has access to.
Estimates suggest 30,000 men a month are being killed, injured or deemed missing yet Putin is expected to launch a second forced mobilisation of more than 500,000 civilians into the military to continue fighting.
On Thursday, Polish PM Donald Tusk went further, telling his country's parliament that drone and missile strikes were not out of the question.
Their interactions were defined by the 2014 MH17 disaster in which 298 people, including 38 Australians, were killed when Russian-backed separatists shot down a passenger flight over south-eastern Ukraine.
Bush's administration began criticising the democratic backsliding in Moscow, which hit new levels in 2008 when Putin engineered a way to retain authority over Russian affairs despite reaching the limit of his constitutional term.
In February 2003, Khodorkovsky asked Putin to help.