It's Putin’s tale of two cities - London for his oligarchs, Kyiv for his bombs | Marina Hyde

Our capital pulls its punches when it comes to penalising Russia's richest, but Putin shows no such mercy to Ukraine

If I look out of the window as I'm writing this, I can see the grand, stuccoed Russian embassy in London, which some years ago mounted a large screen on the wall outside, on which it likes to broadcast its frequently obnoxious Twitter feed to passersby. If I look at the television screen in the room in which I'm sitting, I can see a despairing Ukrainian woman throwing her broken windows from her apartment building in the aftermath of a shelling. So yes: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

This afternoon, when I walk down to the opticians, I will pass some large, unconvincingly spontaneous graffiti that recently appeared on someone else's wall. It reads: There is no Russian interference in elections." (Kids, eh?) Next, I will pass two vast houses that I know to be owned by oligarchs - one of whom is Roman Abramovich - and two others that are heavily rumoured to be. Some of these properties are on a street that also hosts various ambassadorial residences, and they are therefore protected obligingly around the clock by multiple armed British police officers.