Mitt Romney may be feeling a little stung by some of the press analysis as he strives to win the US presidency for the Republicans.

But the most seething assessment comes, reliably enough, from Russia’s Pravda.ru.

Having insulted Vladimir Putin, the Republican has roused English-language editor Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey into an almighty rage.

Romney has proven himself a “nasty, cowardly, little and sinister man”, he writes, in his account of this “ABC of  Failure”.

Not to mention an “ignorant, arrogant, upstart nobody from the middle of nowhere”.

Also, he’s a “follower of Satan”, says T B-H, smoke emerging from his nostrils.

In case that’s not clear enough: Romney is “puerile and idiotic”, a “small-town, rude, wannabe, insolent, cowardly, arrogant, belligerent, chauvinistic, demonic and Satanic upstart”.