Russia’s Deception and Denial Machine

By Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

The main narrative of post-Communism is that the Russian Federation is unique and, therefore, its system is neither of the West nor of the East. Instead, it is sui generis: a “sovereign democracy,” which in reality is a cover for the post-Communist dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, that deploys all the tools of statecraft, including strategic communications. It seems like a mighty machine which we must learn to map to be able to face it down........Read More

My Take - Interesting article but it lacks the most important point necessary to understand what Putin is doing in Russia.  Everything he's doing is what has been foundational Russian foreign policy going back to Ivan the Terrible. 

Create buffer states between ethnic Russians and the rest of the world.  He's trying to keep Russia live. 

I hate to keep repeating this stuff, but so many "experts" keep missing the point.  Russia is breeding itself out of existence and by 2040 the ethnic Russians may well be a minority in their own nation, and may not be a sovereign nation at all by 2050.   Their military has some excellent elite troops, but the rest of it is ill trained, ill equipped and the nation has too few troops to man the seven defensive gaps Russia needs to control.  They only have enough manpower for three of those gaps, and those are around the Ukraine.  The nation has very real problems with hunger, HIV, antibiotic resistant TB and alcoholism.  Putin isn't wanting to conquer the world....he's just wanting to keep himself in power and he has to keep Russia alive to do that.