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Fascinating insights. Thank you.

Putin seems to me to be ideologically fluid - he is a pragmatic strongman kleptocrat with a chip on his shoulder for the West, which he uses to justify his aggression and abuses. He seems to have absolutely no moral boundaries. But his goals together with the elite he serves are cementing their power and impunity first and foremost. This impulse guides like 99.9% of Russian autocratic leadership’s decision making as far as I can tell - protecting and preserving the enormous pile of stolen wealth and power.

My $0.02, the major misunderstanding of Putin and this conflict surrounds Russia’s position that it is threatened. EuroMaidan was so threatening to Putin and cronies not because NATO would invade Russia next with tanks and guns. But eventually, the West’s culture and values would eventually invade with protest mantras and demands for ousting leadership. Having Russia border a functional liberal state is the threat Russian leadership seeks to neutralize - it is existential only to autocratic leadership however, not Russia as a state or to Russian citizens.

The “Mauripol plan” floated to Paul Manafort to entice him during the 2016 presidential campaign demonstrates Russia’s goals to create independent vassal states with puppet leadership from Ukraine’s eastern provinces dates back to at least 2016, and that their assistance/outreach to Trump’s campaign was largely part of this same conflict, same attempt for Russia’s leadership to secure itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html

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founding

Alexander Vindman says, start with the proposition that Putin is not suicidal. I wish I could.

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I'm not sure how familiar you are with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, but if you haven't read The Last Break Southward, I'd highly recommend it. Zhirinovsky isn't representative of Putin's own views, but he does summarize the farthest extreme of Kremlin-approved Russian nationalism. Basically, he argues that Russia should reconquer all former Soviet territory, plus Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. He also helpfully offers to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by transferring Palestinians to Russia's newly conquered territory in the Middle East. I could go on, but the point is, I think the Kremlin-controlled opposition parties are endlessly interesting.

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There is a tendency for intellectuals to think ideologies move the world. And maybe they do. But in the case of what is happening in the Ukraine, Putin’s views are nothing special. He is in accord with Gorbachov and Yeltsin and, it seems, most everyone else in Russia in seeing the US (and its Nato covering for we all know Nato is just a weird spelling for USA) as a threat and in the business of destabilizing it. Nor, so far as I can tell, is this view delusional. The US wants a unipolar world with it as sole pole. Whoever demurs from this picture is an enemy. Right now the prime enemies are China and Russia. So, Putin acts accordingly. We dont need Arendt or worldviews to explain this. It is far too Putin-centric, and really misses what is going on.

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