9.28.29
For half a millennium, Russia has projected itself as a great power, but its history is less one of enduring strength than of perpetual weakness disguised as might. From Ivan the Terrible through the Soviet Union, Russia expanded at astonishing speed, seizing an empire that at its peak covered one-sixth of the globe. Yet this expansion concealed a reality: an autocracy propped up by repression, xenophobia, and fear, never by institutions of legitimacy or prosperity. The Russian state has consistently demanded recognition as a great power, even as it has consistently lacked the material, political, and moral means to sustain one. This contradiction—ambition outpacing capability—has produced a uniquely Russian style of politics and war. When Russia cannot win by production, innovation, or persuasion, it wins by lying. When it cannot inspire allegiance, it coerces obedience. When it cannot dominate militarily, it turns to hybrid, cognitive, and political warfare. In every generation, Russian leaders have tried to compensate for inferiority with deception, subversion, and brute violence. Lies are not an accident of the system; they are its foundation. From the Bolshevik revolutionaries to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leaders have exhibited the mentality of professional conspirators: they assume enemies are everywhere, truth is relative, and survival depends on sowing confusion and fear.
The bullying masks the inferiority complex; the insistence on imperial glory conceals the fear that without it, the system will collapse. That mentality has endured. Russia makes almost nothing the world wants, offers little as a partner of choice, and cannot build legitimacy through votes. Its leaders know they cannot compete on merit. Putin learned well from his Soviet predecessors. The KGB playbook has long depended on the multiplication of falsehoods. As Soviet leader Yuri Andropov once put it, “We just need to plant the seeds. Others will harvest and re-plant for us.” Useful idiots abroad—politicians, activists, or commentators—spread and legitimize Russian narratives. The fiction that NATO promised never to expand eastward remains the central myth justifying Russian aggression. In reality, NATO threatens Russia the way a lock threatens a thief. Russia is not entitled to a sphere of influence. Russia is not destined to win in Ukraine. Negotiations are not pathways to peace but tools of war. Russia is not powerful – we are. The moment we stop believing the bully’s narrative, the bully loses much of his power. Putin’s Russia excels at only two things: death and disinformation. Everything else—the economy, innovation, soft power, legitimacy—remains barren.
www.kyivpost.com
