A very pro-Russian piece of patent propaganda? And bah humbug, horse feathers and bird's fur that glibly glides over the fact that wartime Leader Stalin, was responsible for killing/executing or disappearing more Russians than that killed during WW11!

And somewhere north of 25 million Russians. either executed or sent into permanent exile in Siberia or Siberian gulag or some such?

If these folks or Putin was able to actually stand in other folk's shoes!?

Then there would be no war in the Ukraine nor annexation of other folk's sovereign territory!

And they'd still have a completely free press, no election fraud, no persecution of minorities for an accident of birth and an unchanged constitution that since the amendment, allows the Russian Dictator, "President" Putin, to rule for life.
Alan B.

One of the best articles we had on OLO for quite some time. A clear-headed analysis of the historic background to Russian policy making the point that the aims haven't much changed for centuries.

Any article that mentions both Liddel Hart and AJP Taylor has got to be worthy of consideration. Liddel Hart is the premier war historian of the 20th century and no one can really understand the causes of war in general and WW2 in particular without reading Taylor's "Origins of the Second World War".

The west's assumption that Russia is set on imperialist expansion for its own sake is simply wrong. There are two issues here:

1. Russia, due to its own inefficiencies which are longstanding has always been in danger of being over-run by wealthier neighbours. Attacks by the Mongols, Turks, French, Swedes, Poles and Germans have embedded themselves in the Russian psyche and inform pretty much all Russian views of the outside world.

2. Russians are very patriotic and long to see their nation as a world leader. Peter the Great sought it. Stalin delivered it. Putin promises it. Russians bristle at being humiliated and seek to make their nation respected.

The trick in regards to Russia is finding a way to assure them that they aren't threatened by the West while at the same time encouraging them to drop the policy of protecting their borders by dominating their neighbours.

Such a trick, reversing a millenium's thinking isn't going to be easy. Russia will never be a western nation. But it can become a western ally or better still western partner.

Hysterically accusing them of doing something that almost every nation does (clandestine interference) is no path to peace. Doing it for mere party political purposes is fraught with danger.

They were OBAMA's intelligence communities. What did he do with it?