Post

Putin has no ideology; he is, in fact, an intellectually unsophisticated person. His entire political worldview rests on two very simple narratives. 1/9

One is that the West is waging an eternal war against Russia. The other is that Ukraine is merely an instrument of the West in the current episode of the perennial anti-Russian war. 2/9

There have been various attempts to “intellectualise” Putin’s thinking by linking him to Ivan Ilyin, Alexander Dugin, and the like – but it is all utterly excessive: all of Putin’s statements about the West and the war ultimately boil down to those two simple ideas. 4/9

Yet despite their simplicity, these notions are deadly. If Ukraine is seen as an instrument of the West in its perennial war against Russia, then the Russian leadership views it as an imperative to destroy that instrument – thereby striking an indirect blow against the West itself. 5/9

Such a blow, in their logic, would inevitably weaken the West and improve the prospects for further Russian retaliatory efforts. 6/9