The cables portray Mr. Putin as enjoying supremacy over all other Russian public figures, yet undermined by the very nature of the post-Soviet country he helped build.

Even a man with his formidable will and intellect is shown beholden to intractable larger forces, including an inefficient economy and an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignores his edicts.

In language candid and bald, the cables reveal an assessment of Mr. Putin’s Russia as highly centralized, occasionally brutal and all but irretrievably cynical and corrupt. The Kremlin, by this description, lies at the center of a constellation of official and quasi-official rackets.

UK operations in Afghanistan are criticised in US State Department files released by the Wikileaks website, according to the Guardian.

The paper is one of several around the world carrying the latest data to be published by the whistle-blowing site.

It includes criticism of David Cameron and inappropriate remarks by the Duke of York about a law enforcement agency and foreign country, it says.

Publishing the files risks national security, the Foreign Office says.

However, former British ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer said the leaks were merely embarrassing and would not "make any difference at all" in political terms.

picture by Andy Leonisky

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had a reputation for being suspicious and paranoid even before everyone was out to get him.

Everyone, in this case, is the US - where government lawyers are hoping to prosecute on espionage charges - and the European Union, where he is wanted for questioning in connection with a Swedish rape investigation.

Red faces in Washington? Well yes, almost certainly, and probably in a significant number of other capitals too, not least in the Middle East where a series of leaders and senior figures in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi are quoted as urging Washington to bomb Iran's nuclear programme.

This avalanche of cables from the internal, supposedly secure e-mail switching system linking US embassies abroad with the state department and Pentagon in Washington is a nightmare for US diplomacy.

The doors to a previously hidden world of diplomatic intrigue and insults were dramatically thrown open last night as the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks published its vast tranche of secret American diplomatic communiqués. The release of hundreds of thousands of secret messages from staff at US embassies revealed how Washington has struggled to confront the geopolitical realities of a post-9/11 world.

It also exposed the often less than diplomatic language used by State Department insiders to describe some of the planet's most powerful leaders.

From Annabel Crabb/the drum...

Let's get something straight; politicians of both sexes get ribbed about their looks.

Most of them are martyrs to the cartoonists, who never waste the opportunity provided by a pointy nose or big ears, whatever the gender of the affected person.

A slip of the tongue by Sarah Palin mixing up North and South Korea is a reminder of the credibility hurdles she faces

Interviewer: How would you handle a situation like the one that just developed in North Korea?

The Government's lynchpin election promise of a National Broadband Network (NBN) has inched closer to fruition today, after a deal was struck with independent Senator Nick Xenophon.

Senator Xenophon had been refusing to back NBN legislation which would enable the separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail arms.

He wanted the NBN business case released before promising his vote in the Upper House on the bill to separate Telstra.

The Government has now confirmed it has agreed to release a summary of the business plan ahead of a vote in the Senate.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI clearly acknowledged on Tuesday that the need to prevent diseases like AIDS could outweigh the church’s long opposition to the use of condoms.

Wayne Swan: Well, I can't speculate about Senator Xenophon. There's an important debate going on. The debate at the moment, Fran, is actually about structural separation. Which is absolutely fundamental to microeconomic reform in this country, in getting not only super fast broadband, but a much more efficient and prosperous economy into the future. I know Senator Xenophon shares that objective.