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Efforts to impose sanctions on the Nord Stream 2, an undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany that would give Moscow enormous leverage over Europe, have long drawn bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have enthusiastically sought to bolster Ukraine against Russian aggression.

the timing of the vote — amid continuing diplomatic talks between Russia and the United States in the hopes of averting war — as well as the Biden administration’s vocal opposition ultimately helped fuel the measure’s defeat.

Six Democrats — some of them facing difficult re-elections in 2022 — defected from their party’s position and voted in favor of the measure,

The Biden administration and its allies in Congress argued the legislation, led by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, would do little to counter Russian influence because the pipeline’s construction is nearly completed.

Instead, they said, the sanctions would drive a wedge between the United States and Germany, which has championed the pipeline as vital to its industrial success, and give up a key point of leverage during diplomatic negotiations.

“If this bill passes, it won’t make the Nord Stream pipeline any less likely,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. “It won’t stop Russia from invading Ukraine. In fact, it will do the exact opposite.

Republicans accused Democrats of allowing Russian aggression to go unchecked, painting their reluctance to impose sanctions as politically motivated.

“I would suggest if Joe Biden were not president, if Donald Trump were sitting in the Oval Office today, every single Democrat in this chamber would vote for these sanctions.”

“The pipeline itself is the wedge,” Mr. McConnell said. “That’s the whole point. That’s been Putin’s goal: decoupling Ukraine from Europe and making Europe even more reliant on Russian gas.”

On a Christmas Eve video call with a bipartisan group of more than 20 lawmakers, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine cast Nord Stream 2 as an existential threat to his country, arguing that the pipeline posed as much risk to Ukraine as the Russian troops amassing on its border,

An email sent on Monday to Senate offices by the lobbyist, which was forwarded to The New York Times, included a screenshot of Mr. Zelensky’s tweet, and added the message, “Ukraine Pres. Zelensky calls on all senators to vote in favor of Nord Stream 2 sanctions.”

The next day, the issue came up again as senators met with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in a closed-door meeting to discuss an upcoming delegation trip to Ukraine.

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, unveiled on Wednesday a Democratic alternative to Mr. Cruz’s bill that would impose sanctions on top Russian government officials, including Mr. Putin, if Russia engages in or supports “a significant escalation in hostilities or hostile action in or against Ukraine.”

It likely did not help Mr. Cruz’s cause that many Democrats are furious with him for depriving President Biden of a slew of national security officials who are still awaiting Senate confirmation.

Last month, he agreed to stop blocking the confirmation of 32 of Mr. Biden’s State Department and Treasury Department nominees in exchange for Thursday’s vote.

Mr. Hochstein had also served on a supervisory board of Naftogaz until he resigned in late 2020, citing concerns about the Ukrainian government’s willingness to combat corruption.

First, the Turks and Russians have too much to gain from staying in Libya. Second, they have little incentive to leave under current circumstances because the only power in the world that could potentially use its leverage to pressure Turkish and Russian forces to depart is the United States. It is unlikely for the US to play its cards in such a manner.

Washington is not interested in Libya, especially at this time when there are far more pressing problems – from Donbas to North Korea, to China and, above all, to the enormous internal problems that the Biden administration is facing,”

From Washington’s perspective, this is not necessarily problematic so long as the Wagner Group’s presence does not expand. Because of such concerns about the Russian force enlarging its footprint in Libya, the US sees the Turkish military’s presence in the polarised North African country as the best outcome that Washington could realistically expect.

Beyond issues stemming from economic competition, there are security issues that give EU members reason to perceive the Turkish and Russian hard power in Libya as threatening national interests of European powers. “Finally, whoever controls the Libyan coast controls migration flows and this is a strategic issue that Brussels should not underestimate,” said Fasanotti.

The presence of both Turkish and Russian forces in the North African country is deeply unsettling to European powers, unlike Washington that has taken a far more favourable stance towards Ankara’s role in Libya.

“The presence of Turkish forces there is of course considered detrimental to France’s interests, given the strategic alignment of Paris to Abu Dhabi and its support of the Eastern forces of General Khalifa Haftar in the 2019-2020 Tripoli offensive,”

“Economic competition must be also factored into these considerations, which help explain why after many years of a worrisome intra-European spat, Paris [which backed Haftar] and Rome [which backed the Government of National Accord] decided to come together, set aside their differences, and face outsiders expanding their influence in the Libyan arena.”

“The only mechanism that the United States has is the Turkish presence. When the United States looks at Turkey it sees a NATO member.

If the US remains unwilling to throw its weight around in Libya and maintains its own perspectives on Turkish-Russian rivalry for influence that leads Washington to be more accommodating of Ankara’s Libya foreign policy than several of the US’s close European allies, these divisions could deepen.

December 29 bombing at the city's main train station followed by a December 30 trolleybus blast—have claimed more than 30 additional lives and left many to wonder why Volgograd has become an unlikely insurgent target.

Winter Olympics less than six weeks away,

host city Sochi,

a Russian site dedicated to terrorism and intelligence, says the Volgograd attacks—which took place 400 miles northeast of Sochi—throw such planning into disarray.

"I think the goal was to distract security forces

they'll be forced to think not only about ensuring the safety of the major Russian cities as well as Sochi and the infrastructure around the Olympic facilities," Soldatov says. "On top of that, they'll also have to pay special attention to Volgograd. It's an effective tactic—diverting attention away from a place where the terrorists may be planning their next attack."

Russian authorities, citing similarities in the explosives and shrapnel used in the latest blasts, have acknowledged the two attacks may be linked.

slamic insurgents have frequently sought out high-profile Russian targets, most notably in Moscow.

Volgograd, an industrial city of 1 million, has no evident strategic value as a terrorist target, although its train station—the site of the December 29 blast—is a major transportation hub on the country's north-south rail links.

Volgograd Oblast, the site of a massive purge of 1980s-era communist authorities, is still viewed as one of Russia's most corrupt regions. It is unclear, however, what bearing that might have on its sudden terrorist appeal.

Writing on the website of the Carnegie Moscow Center, director Dmitry Trenin notes that the city, "a symbol of Russia's tragedy and triumph in World War II, h

"But the fact that there have been three attacks in a row in one region—excuse me, but it's a slap in the face of our authorities." 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to the bombings by stepping up security measures across the country, with the Interior Ministry promising special scrutiny of transportation hubs. But inside Volgograd, where local streets were quickly choked with emergency vehicles, correspondents have reported a distinct shortage of police personnel.

"After the first attack, they were supposed to do a lot of work, do something to protect the population. That didn't happen. And the problem isn't where it took place—why it happened in Volgograd Oblast," he says. "The problem is where else other attacks might take place. If it happened in Volgograd, it means it could happen in any city in this part of Russia."

“If you watch some of the shows that go on during the day, it’s harkening back to the heroic deeds of the Soviet Army, liberating the Crimea and Sevastopol,” said Vladimir V. Pozner, host of a political talk show on Channel One. “You begin to be very antsy — is this the buildup to something else? Is this not preparing the population for what ultimately will be the use of force?

Abby Martin, a Washington-based anchor from Russia Today, a state-owned, English-language cable news network, created a stir by denouncing Russia’s intervention during a broadcast on Monday. Margarita Simonyan, the channel’s editor in chief, sent her a message saying that what she had said was “not in line with our editorial policy,” she said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “We have never made a secret of the fact that we reflect Russia’s position,” she said.

Her decision was followed late Wednesday by the on-air resignation of a second anchor, Liz Wahl, who said she could “not be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin.”In a statement, Russia Today said “the usual course of action” was to address grievances with the editor, or “quit like a professional.” Ms. Wahl’s resignation was, the statement said, “nothing more than a self-promotional stunt.”

Irek Murtazin, a Russian blogger, took umbrage when a state newspaper reported that the upper house of Parliament had “unanimously” approved the use of military force in Ukraine, publishing screen shots that showed that only 90 of the body’s 166 members had voted. “It is a sign that the Russian elite is not as monolithic as it is presented to us,” he said. Ms. Borodina said the fact-checking was a new phenomenon, as bloggers and others turn a critical eye on television.“People just didn’t watch television before,” she said. “Falsifications have always been there.”

Mr. Stamos joined Facebook from Yahoo in June 2015. He and other Facebook executives, such as Ms. Sandberg, disagreed early on over how proactive the social network should be in policing its own platform, said the people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Stamos first put together a group of engineers to scour Facebook for Russian activity in June 2016, the month the Democratic National Committee announced it had been attacked by Russian hackers, the current and former employees said.

By November 2016, the team had uncovered evidence that Russian operatives had aggressively pushed DNC leaks and propaganda on Facebook. That same month, Mr. Zuckerberg publicly dismissed the notion that fake news influenced the 2016 election, calling it a “pretty crazy idea

In the ensuing months, Facebook’s security team found more Russian disinformation and propaganda on its site, according to the current and former employees. By the spring of 2017, deciding how much Russian interference to disclose publicly became a major source of contention within the company.

A detailed memorandum Mr. Stamos wrote in early 2017 describing Russian interference was scrubbed for mentions of Russia and winnowed into a blog post last April that outlined, in hypothetical terms, how Facebook could be manipulated by a foreign adversary, they said. Russia was only referenced in a vague footnote. That footnote acknowledged that Facebook’s findings did not contradict a declassified January 2017 report in which the director of national intelligence concluded Russia had sought to undermine United States election, and Hillary Clinton in particular.

Mr. Stamos pushed to disclose as much as possible, while others including Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and policy, recommended not naming Russia without more ironclad evidence, said the current and former employees.

By last September, after Mr. Stamos’s investigation had revealed further Russian interference, Facebook was forced to reverse course. That month, the company disclosed that beginning in June 2015, Russians had paid Facebook $100,000 to run roughly 3,000 divisive ads to show the American electorate.

The public reaction caused some at Facebook to recoil at revealing more, said the current and former employees. Since the 2016 election, Facebook has paid unusual attention to the reputations of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg, conducting polls to track how they are viewed by the public, said Tavis McGinn, who was recruited to the company last April and headed the executive reputation efforts through September 2017.

Mr. McGinn, who now heads Honest Data, which has done polling about Facebook’s reputation in different countries, said Facebook is “caught in a Catch-22.”

“Facebook cares so much about its image that the executives don’t want to come out and tell the whole truth when things go wrong,” he said. “But if they don’t, it damages their image.”

Mr. McGinn said he left Facebook after becoming disillusioned with the company’s conduct.

By December 2017, Mr. Stamos, who reports to Facebook’s general counsel, proposed that he report directly to higher-ups. Facebook executives rejected that proposal and instead reassigned Mr. Stamos’s team, splitting the security team between its product team, overseen by Guy Rosen, and infrastructure team, overseen by Pedro Canahuati, according to current and former employees.

“I told them, ‘Your business is based on trust, and you’re losing trust,’” said Mr. McNamee, a founder of the Center for Humane Technology. “They were treating it as a P.R. problem, when it’s a business problem. I couldn’t believe these guys I once knew so well had gotten so far off track.”

They do this by sucking up and analyzing your data, using it to predict what will cause you to react most strongly, and then giving you more of that.

Algorithms that maximize attention give an advantage to negative messages. People tend to react more to inputs that land low on the brainstem. Fear and anger produce a lot more engagement and sharing than joy

The result is that the algorithms favor sensational content over substance.

for mass media, this was constrained by one-size-fits-all content and by the limitations of delivery platforms. Not so for internet platforms on smartphones. They have created billions of individual channels, each of which can be pushed further into negativity and extremism without the risk of alienating other audience members

On Facebook, it’s your news feed, while on Google it’s your individually customized search results. The result is that everyone sees a different version of the internet tailored to create the illusion that everyone else agrees with them.

It took Brexit for me to begin to see the danger of this dynamic. I’m no expert on British politics, but it seemed likely that Facebook might have had a big impact on the vote because one side’s message was perfect for the algorithms and the other’s wasn’t. The “Leave” campaign made an absurd promise—there would be savings from leaving the European Union that would fund a big improvement in the National Health System—while also exploiting xenophobia by casting Brexit as the best way to protect English culture and jobs from immigrants. It was too-good-to-be-true nonsense mixed with fearmongering.

Facebook was a much cheaper and more effective platform for Leave in terms of cost per user reached. And filter bubbles would ensure that people on the Leave side would rarely have their questionable beliefs challenged. Facebook’s model may have had the power to reshape an entire continent.

Tristan Harris, formerly the design ethicist at Google. Tristan had just appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss the public health threat from social networks like Facebook. An expert in persuasive technology, he described the techniques that tech platforms use to create addiction and the ways they exploit that addiction to increase profits. He called it “brain hacking.”

The most important tool used by Facebook and Google to hold user attention is filter bubbles. The use of algorithms to give consumers “what they want” leads to an unending stream of posts that confirm each user’s existing beliefs

Continuous reinforcement of existing beliefs tends to entrench those beliefs more deeply, while also making them more extreme and resistant to contrary facts

No one stopped them from siphoning off the profits of content creators. No one stopped them from gathering data on every aspect of every user’s internet life. No one stopped them from amassing market share not seen since the days of Standard Oil.

Facebook takes the concept one step further with its “groups” feature, which encourages like-minded users to congregate around shared interests or beliefs. While this ostensibly provides a benefit to users, the larger benefit goes to advertisers, who can target audiences even more effectively.

We theorized that the Russians had identified a set of users susceptible to its message, used Facebook’s advertising tools to identify users with similar profiles, and used ads to persuade those people to join groups dedicated to controversial issues. Facebook’s algorithms would have favored Trump’s crude message and the anti-Clinton conspiracy theories that thrilled his supporters, with the likely consequence that Trump and his backers paid less than Clinton for Facebook advertising per person reached.

The ads were less important, though, than what came next: once users were in groups, the Russians could have used fake American troll accounts and computerized “bots” to share incendiary messages and organize events.

Trolls and bots impersonating Americans would have created the illusion of greater support for radical ideas than actually existed.

Real users “like” posts shared by trolls and bots and share them on their own news feeds, so that small investments in advertising and memes posted to Facebook groups would reach tens of millions of people.

A similar strategy prevailed on other platforms, including Twitter. Both techniques, bots and trolls, take time and money to develop—but the payoff would have been huge.

2016 was just the beginning. Without immediate and aggressive action from Washington, bad actors of all kinds would be able to use Facebook and other platforms to manipulate the American electorate in future elections.

Renee DiResta, an expert in how conspiracy theories spread on the internet. Renee described how bad actors plant a rumor on sites like 4chan and Reddit, leverage the disenchanted people on those sites to create buzz, build phony news sites with “press” versions of the rumor, push the story onto Twitter to attract the real media, then blow up the story for the masses on Facebook.

It was sophisticated hacker technique, but not expensive. We hypothesized that the Russians were able to manipulate tens of millions of American voters for a sum less than it would take to buy an F-35 fighter jet.

Algorithms can be beautiful in mathematical terms, but they are only as good as the people who create them. In the case of Facebook and Google, the algorithms have flaws that are increasingly obvious and dangerous.

Thanks to the U.S. government’s laissez-faire approach to regulation, the internet platforms were able to pursue business strategies that would not have been allowed in prior decades. No one stopped them from using free products to centralize the internet and then replace its core functions.

To the contrary: the platforms help people self-segregate into like-minded filter bubbles, reducing the risk of exposure to challenging ideas.

No one stopped them from running massive social and psychological experiments on their users. No one demanded that they police their platforms. It has been a sweet deal.

Facebook and Google are now so large that traditional tools of regulation may no longer be effective.

The largest antitrust fine in EU history bounced off Google like a spitball off a battleship.

It reads like the plot of a sci-fi novel: a technology celebrated for bringing people together is exploited by a hostile power to drive people apart, undermine democracy, and create misery. This is precisely what happened in the United States during the 2016 election.

We had constructed a modern Maginot Line—half the world’s defense spending and cyber-hardened financial centers, all built to ward off attacks from abroad—never imagining that an enemy could infect the minds of our citizens through inventions of our own making, at minimal cost

Not only was the attack an overwhelming success, but it was also a persistent one, as the political party that benefited refuses to acknowledge reality. The attacks continue every day, posing an existential threat to our democratic processes and independence.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other platforms were manipulated by the Russians to shift outcomes in Brexit and the U.S. presidential election, and unless major changes are made, they will be manipulated again. Next time, there is no telling who the manipulators will be.

Unfortunately, there is no regulatory silver bullet. The scope of the problem requires a multi-pronged approach.

Polls suggest that about a third of Americans believe that Russian interference is fake news, despite unanimous agreement to the contrary by the country’s intelligence agencies. Helping those people accept the truth is a priority. I recommend that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others be required to contact each person touched by Russian content with a personal message that says, “You, and we, were manipulated by the Russians. This really happened, and here is the evidence.” The message would include every Russian message the user received.

This idea, which originated with my colleague Tristan Harris, is based on experience with cults. When you want to deprogram a cult member, it is really important that the call to action come from another member of the cult, ideally the leader.

decentralization had a cost: no one had an incentive to make internet tools easy to use. Frustrated by those tools, users embraced easy-to-use alternatives from Facebook and Google. This allowed the platforms to centralize the internet, inserting themselves between users and content, effectively imposing a tax on both sides. This is a great business model for Facebook and Google—and convenient in the short term for customers—but we are drowning in evidence that there are costs that society may not be able to afford.

Second, the chief executive officers of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others—not just their lawyers—must testify before congressional committees in open session

This is important not just for the public, but also for another crucial constituency: the employees who keep the tech giants running. While many of the folks who run Silicon Valley are extreme libertarians, the people who work there tend to be idealists. They want to believe what they’re doing is good. Forcing tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg to justify the unjustifiable, in public—without the shield of spokespeople or PR spin—would go a long way to puncturing their carefully preserved cults of personality in the eyes of their employees.

We also need regulatory fixes. Here are a few ideas.

First, it’s essential to ban digital bots that impersonate humans. They distort the “public square” in a way that was never possible in history, no matter how many anonymous leaflets you printed.

At a minimum, the law could require explicit labeling of all bots, the ability for users to block them, and liability on the part of platform vendors for the harm bots cause.

Second, the platforms should not be allowed to make any acquisitions until they have addressed the damage caused to date, taken steps to prevent harm in the future, and demonstrated that such acquisitions will not result in diminished competition.

An underappreciated aspect of the platforms’ growth is their pattern of gobbling up smaller firms—in Facebook’s case, that includes Instagram and WhatsApp; in Google’s, it includes YouTube, Google Maps, AdSense, and many others—and using them to extend their monopoly power.

This is important, because the internet has lost something very valuable. The early internet was designed to be decentralized. It treated all content and all content owners equally. That equality had value in society, as it kept the playing field level and encouraged new entrants.

There’s no doubt that the platforms have the technological capacity to reach out to every affected person. No matter the cost, platform companies must absorb it as the price for their carelessness in allowing the manipulation.

Third, the platforms must be transparent about who is behind political and issues-based communication.

Transparency with respect to those who sponsor political advertising of all kinds is a step toward rebuilding trust in our political institutions.

Fourth, the platforms must be more transparent about their algorithms. Users deserve to know why they see what they see in their news feeds and search results. If Facebook and Google had to be up-front about the reason you’re seeing conspiracy theories—namely, that it’s good for business—they would be far less likely to stick to that tactic

Allowing third parties to audit the algorithms would go even further toward maintaining transparency. Facebook and Google make millions of editorial choices every hour and must accept responsibility for the consequences of those choices. Consumers should also be able to see what attributes are causing advertisers to target them.

Fifth, the platforms should be required to have a more equitable contractual relationship with users. Facebook, Google, and others have asserted unprecedented rights with respect to end-user license agreements (EULAs), the contracts that specify the relationship between platform and user.

All software platforms should be required to offer a legitimate opt-out, one that enables users to stick with the prior version if they do not like the new EULA.

“Forking” platforms between old and new versions would have several benefits: increased consumer choice, greater transparency on the EULA, and more care in the rollout of new functionality, among others. It would limit the risk that platforms would run massive social experiments on millions—or billions—of users without appropriate prior notification. Maintaining more than one version of their services would be expensive for Facebook, Google, and the rest, but in software that has always been one of the costs of success. Why should this generation get a pass?

Sixth, we need a limit on the commercial exploitation of consumer data by internet platforms. Customers understand that their “free” use of platforms like Facebook and Google gives the platforms license to exploit personal data. The problem is that platforms are using that data in ways consumers do not understand, and might not accept if they did.

Not only do the platforms use your data on their own sites, but they also lease it to third parties to use all over the internet. And they will use that data forever, unless someone tells them to stop.

There should be a statute of limitations on the use of consumer data by a platform and its customers. Perhaps that limit should be ninety days, perhaps a year. But at some point, users must have the right to renegotiate the terms of how their data is used.

Seventh, consumers, not the platforms, should own their own data. In the case of Facebook, this includes posts, friends, and events—in short, the entire social graph. Users created this data, so they should have the right to export it to other social networks.

It would be analogous to the regulation of the AT&T monopoly’s long-distance business, which led to lower prices and better service for consumers.

Eighth, and finally, we should consider that the time has come to revive the country’s traditional approach to monopoly. Since the Reagan era, antitrust law has operated under the principle that monopoly is not a problem so long as it doesn’t result in higher prices for consumers.

Under that framework, Facebook and Google have been allowed to dominate several industries—not just search and social media but also email, video, photos, and digital ad sales, among others—increasing their monopolies by buying potential rivals like YouTube and Instagram.

While superficially appealing, this approach ignores costs that don’t show up in a price tag. Addiction to Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms has a cost. Election manipulation has a cost. Reduced innovation and shrinkage of the entrepreneurial economy has a cost. All of these costs are evident today. We can quantify them well enough to appreciate that the costs to consumers of concentration on the internet are unacceptably high.

Facebook’s executive team was alerted to the potential Russian manipulation efforts in a Dec. 9, 2016, memo from the company’s security team, say people familiar with the memo. But the company waited nine months before publicly saying that Russian manipulation had occurred.

a former Federal Bureau of Investigation counterterrorism agent now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think tank. Mr. Watts added that Facebook has done more to address the Russian issue than other tech companies, but has borne the brunt of public criticism.

The issue of Russian election interference on our platform is something we continued to learn more about as we conducted our own internal reviews and provided information to law enforcement officials and legislators to inform their own inquiries.”

Indeed, while the security team worked to uncover Russian accounts through 2017, Facebook assigned a small team to boost user growth in Russia and other markets, says a person familiar with the team. The team considered developing Russia-specific products such as a music service, although it didn’t launch it, the person says.

Previously, the official narrative was an essay written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in which he argued that deep distrust between the court and the educated elite along with German meddling brought about catastrophe.

The latter fits the Kremlin narrative that Russia has long been besieged by foreign aggressors and that the West strives to implant friendly regimes everywhere by sponsoring “color revolutions.” Columnists have been lumping 1917 among more recent color revolutions in places like Georgia and Ukraine, naturally listing the United States among the suspected agitators.

There is also a damning lack of heroic figures in the revolution. Czar Nicholas II was deposed and thus weak. Alexander F. Kerensky, the central figure in the provisional government, proved ineffective. Lenin fomented appalling bloodshed and destroyed the Russian Orthodox Church, a pillar of Mr. Putin’s support.

“Vladimir Putin cannot compare himself to Nicholas II, nor to Lenin nor to Kerensky, because that is not Russian history to be proud of,” said Mikhail Zygar, a Russian journalist and the author of a best-selling book, “All the Kremlin’s Men,” which details the inner workings of the Putin regime. “In terms of 1917, nothing can be used as a propaganda tool.”

Mr. Putin’s critiques of the revolution contrast markedly with his usual glowing tributes to Russian history. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “We know well the consequences that these great upheavals can bring,” he said in his state of the federation speech in December. “Unfortunately, our country went through many such upheavals and their consequences in the 20th century.”At an earlier public forum, after disparaging Lenin, he said, “We didn’t need the world revolution.”

At one recent forum, Vladimir R. Medinsky, the conservative minister of culture, said the revolution underscored the dangers of letting liberals rule, because they always put self-interest above Russia.

Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church, speaking at the same event, lambasted those who destroyed the czarist state rather than seeking compromise.

Liberals retort that a repressive government ignoring vast income disparity and curbing basic rights should be worried about history repeating itself.

“The authorities cannot celebrate 1917,” said Nikita Sokolov, a historian. “Whatever might have happened, the impulse of the revolution was social justice. A country with such inequality can’t celebrate this. Also, the authorities think that any revolution is a color revolution.”

At a recent forum, Leonid Reshetnikov, a historian and retired lieutenant general in Russia’s foreign intelligence service, described trying to explain to his granddaughter why the city of Yekaterinburg had a church dedicated to the czar and his family, who were canonized by the church, as well as a monument to Lenin, the man who ordered them shot there.

“We live in historical schizophrenia, with these monuments to Lenin, to all of them,” he said, going on to denounce any street protesters as potential revolutionaries.

The military budget is being set and major decisions on troop levels and priorities are being made so it's hoped the war game will help prepare the military to face the challenges of the next few years.

War games are always sensitive and outcomes are closely guarded because they can reveal shortfalls in US military plans and operations. One former defense official confirmed that in a recent exercise gaming out a conflict against major adversaries like Russia and China, "we found the Blue Team, the US and allies, kept losing."

The scenarios covered in the game this summer will reflect real life possibilities. Those could include major cyber attacks, a Russian advance in the Baltics, further militarization of the Arctic by Moscow or China flexing its muscles in the South China Sea or even invading Taiwan.

And preparations aren't just virtual. This week, the US and Canada have been carrying out military exercises, in tough conditions where temperatures can plunge to -20 Fahrenheit, to make clear they are ready to push back against Russian military advances in the resource rich Arctic.

Russia has put advanced missiles in the region to protect its bases there and is directly challenging the US. In 2020 more Russian aircraft flew near US airspace off Alaska than at any time since the end of the Cold War, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command with multiple flights of heavy bombers, anti-submarine aircraft, and intelligence collection planes.

For NORAD, the US and Canadian command overseeing the exercise, a key priority is "being able to track and then defeat" potential Russian military activity in the Arctic, Canadian NORAD Region Commander, Major-General Eric Kenny, told CNN.Concerns about Russian and Chinese activity are increasing and there are no signs of tensions abating since Biden took office.

The US military is doing substantive planning for the challenge from Russia and China, with billions of dollars of spending planned on modernization in both the nuclear and non-nuclear arena if its wins Congressional approval.

At the same time the rhetoric from the Biden administration is heating up. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called out Russia for "reckless and adversarial actions" at a NATO meeting in Brussels this week and observed that Moscow has "built up a forces, large scale exercises and acts of intimidation, in the Baltic and Black Sea."

And on China, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks pulled no punches in a speech earlier this month. "Beijing has demonstrated increased military competence and a willingness to take risks, and it has adopted a more coercive and aggressive approach," she said before adding that Beijing's actions "constitute a threat to regional peace and stability, and to the rules-based international order on which our security and prosperity and those of our allies depend."

There is no indication the tough words are tamping down Russian President Vladimir Putin and China President Xi Jinping's plans to strengthen their militaries to ensure they are capable of challenging the US and its allies. Austin, in the coming weeks, "will focus on deterrence" improvements to counter adversaries, a senior defense official told CNN

Top commanders are increasingly blunt about both countries, especially on nuclear modernization.

Russia is upgrading bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles and warning systems, "in short, its entire strategic force structure," wrote Admiral Charles Richard, head of the US Strategic Command in a recent article in the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute journal. Moscow is also building hypersonic weapons that travel more than five times the speed of sound, and nuclear-powered torpedoes, capable of reaching US shores quickly.

China is about to become a nation with a full nuclear triad, with an inventory of nuclear capable missiles, submarines and soon a long-range bomber.

Both nations are expanding their ability to operate in wider areas in Europe and Asia meaning the Pentagon could be forced to send US forces thousands of miles away. "Russia and China are playing a home game, we are playing an away game," Edelman said.

The US is also looking to send a clear message to Beijing amid concerns about Taiwan as China has increased aircraft and shipping activity near the island

In response to Russian advances in eastern Europe, the US and NATO allies are increasing their own presence. But it's not enough, warns David Ochmanek, a senior RAND Corporation analyst and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development. "The US and its allies do not have sufficient combat power," he told CNN. The reality he says is "within 48 to 60 hours Russian forces could be on outskirts of a Baltic capital," once it pre-positions forces.US military experts say this underlines why war games like the upcoming summer exercise are so important to ensure the military can practice and plan ahead before a crisis hits.

the pandemic killed about one in every 400 people in Russia, compared with one in every 600 in the United States.

In the United States, with more than twice the population of Russia, such “excess deaths” since the start of the pandemic have numbered about 574,000

a far different story is told by the official statistics agency Rosstat, which tallies deaths from all causes. Russia saw a jump of 360,000 deaths above normal from last April through December, according to a Times analysis of historical data. Rosstat figures for January and February of this year show that the number is now well above 400,000.

The low official toll has contributed to the obliviousness of Russians to the virus’s dangers in some cases — and to their profound distrust of the government’s messaging regarding the pandemic in others

Last October, a poll found that most Russians did not believe the government’s tally of coronavirus cases: Half of those who did not believe the tally thought it was too high, while half thought it was too low.

In February, another poll found that 60 percent of Russians said they were not planning to get Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, and that most believed the coronavirus to be a biological weapon.

one thing was certain, she said: She will not get vaccinated, even after seeing Covid’s devastation up close. After all, if she cannot trust her mother’s state-issued death certificate, why should she trust the Russian government about the safety of the vaccine?

For all the death, there has been minimal opposition in Russia — even among Mr. Putin’s critics — to the government’s decision to keep businesses open last winter and fall. Some liken it to a Russian stoicism, or fatalism, or the lack of an alternative to keeping the economy running given minimal aid from the state.

“This nation has seen so many traumas,” Mr. Raksha said. “A people that has been through so much develops a very different relationship to death.”

Mr. Raksha, the demographer, noted that the elevated mortality that accompanied the chaos and poverty of the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was deadlier than the overall toll of the pandemic.

“You can choose between continuing to live your life, carefully, or to wall yourself up and stop living,” Mr. Dolonko said. “Unlike you” — Westerners — “Russians know what it means to live in extreme conditions.”

The deaths during the pandemic have been tragic, he said, but he believes they have mostly occurred in people who were of a very advanced age or had other health problems, and were not all related to the virus. Mr. Dolonko, 62, says he wears a mask in crowded places and frequently washes his hands — and regularly goes to gallery openings and shows

A website tracking coronavirus deaths in the Orthodox Church lists seven members of the clergy in the Samara region; Father Sergiy knew several of them well. He said he figured Russia had lifted its coronavirus restrictions because there was no end in sight to the pandemic. He quoted Dostoyevsky: “Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!”“We are growing used to living in a pandemic,” Father Sergiy said. “We are growing used to the deaths.”

Physically, it is the Czar's old Russian Empire with certain major changes. On the eve of World War I, Nicholas II ruled a domain of 6.8 million square miles with a population of 139 million. It included Poland, semi‐independent Finland and the Baltic states.

Lenin lost almost all the empire in the worst days of 1918‐19. But Germany's defeat and the end of civil war and intervention restored to the Bolsheviks most of Russia—minus Finland, Poland and the Baltic states.

Stalin restored the Empire after World War II.

Today the Kremlin holds direct sway over 8.6 million square miles. The population has risen to 250 million souls, as the Czar would have said. Even that great population figure falls shy of Soviet aspirations.

steadily dropping birthrate, a by‐product of Russian urbanization and that most chronic of Russian problems, overcrowded housing.

All of Russia's ethnics are uneasy and unhappy. This one of the problems Mr. Brezhnev will not touch upon at the Party Congress. The issue is simple: a demand for ethnic and racial equality and justice. The Soviet Union divided into 15 “national republics” and many more ethnic regions and districts. But genuine equality does not exist.

Year after year Moscow purges poets, editors and party leaders in Tashkent, Kiev or Riga on charges of “bourgeois nationalism,” “feudal tendencies” “chauvinism.” In other words, for being local patriots.

no one ever purges Moscow of Great Russian chauvinism.

Mimeographs have circulated among young party members, the Communist Youth, calling for “purity of Russian blood” terms remarkably like Hitler Youth racist language.

in the other Russia, the real Russia, antisemitism is chronic. Russia was the traditional home of the hateful prejudice. Many of Hitler's antisemitic fables were drawn from Russian sources. Today antisemitism is encouraged by official propagandists.

bout 150,000 Jews have migrated from the Soviet Union in recent years. The Soviet census lists something over two million cititzens as ethnic Jews.

The actual total is over three million, perhaps four. But many have assimilated or,prefer to conceal their true identity because of the discriminations—inability to enter the foreign services, the higher cadres of the party, the upper echelons of the army and other elite posts, including academic ones.

The Party Congress will emphasize the positive: the rise in the standard of living, or industrial wages now averaging 146 rubles (about $193) a month against 126 rubles five years ago. Meat consumption has risen; the average Russian ate 40 more eggs in 1974 than in 1970.

But no one will whisper about the private stores to which high party and Government officials have access

The Communist Party is organized from the bottom up. Small cells exist in every unit of Soviet society—office, factory, shop, school, institute, laboratory. These form a local organization directed by a party secretary, appointed by the district or republic secretary, all controlled by the Party Secretariat in Moscow. In theory, the Party Congress, meeting every three to five years, is the supreme authority. In reality, of course, the party is run by an inner oligarchy, the 12‐ to 14‐member Politburo.

Not that the party bosses do not know the realities. They

They know the real Russia but they also know that to hang onto the ladder they must protect their flanks.

However, the U.S. is telling a different story. It says that the McCain "asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of Peter the Great Bay in the Sea of Japan."

The 106-nautical mile closing line at the mouth of the bay is "inconsistent with the rules of international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention," according to the Navy.

Although not uncommon during the Cold War, the U.S. and Russian naval forces have had close encounters on the sea and air even in recent years. Russian ships and planes regularly challenge U.S. naval vessels.

Last year, the Admiral Vinogradov came within 50 to 100 feet of the USS Chancellorsville as the American ship was busy recovering a helicopter. The Chancellorsville had to take evasive action to avoid the Russian warship, the Navy says.

supply-chain attack

According to SolarWinds S.E.C. filings, the malware was on the software from March to June. The number of organizations that downloaded the corrupted update could be as many as 18,000, which includes most federal government unclassified networks and more than 425 Fortune 500 companies.

The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate.

The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months.

While the Russians did not have the time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them.

The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated

The actual and perceived control of so many important networks could easily be used to undermine public and consumer trust in data, written communications and services.

hat should be done?On Dec. 13, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security — itself a victim — issued an emergency directive ordering federal civilian agencies to remove SolarWinds software from their networks.

It also is impractical. In 2017, the federal government was ordered to remove from its networks software from a Russian company, Kaspersky Lab, that was deemed too risky. It took over a year to get it off the networks.

The remediation effort alone will be staggering

Cyber threat hunters that are stealthier than the Russians must be unleashed on these networks to look for the hidden, persistent access controls.

The National Defense Authorization Act, which each year provides the Defense Department and other agencies the authority to perform its work, is caught up in partisan wrangling. Among other important provisions, the act would authorize the Department of Homeland Security to perform network hunting in federal networks.

The response must be broader than patching networks. While all indicators point to the Russian government, the United States, and ideally its allies, must publicly and formally attribute responsibility for these hacks. If it is Russia, President Trump must make it clear to Vladimir Putin that these actions are unacceptable. The U.S. military and intelligence community must be placed on increased alert; all elements of national power must be placed on the table.

President Trump is on the verge of leaving behind a federal government, and perhaps a large number of major industries, compromised by the Russian government. He must use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians.President-elect Joe Biden must begin his planning to take charge of this crisis. He has to assume that communications about this matter are being read by Russia, and assume that any government data or email could be falsified.

Mr Sullivan did not spell out whether the sanctions would include the “nuclear option” of cutting Russia off from the Western financial networks, notably the SWIFT system of financial transfers

“Countries should be able to freely choose who they associate with.” And yet, given the fragility of Ukraine’s government, the widespread corruption in the country and its unresolved conflict, membership of NATO seems a distant if not impossible goal

real problem for Mr Putin may be less Ukraine joining NATO than NATO helping Ukraine

“True sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”

In 2014 Mr Putin took over and annexed Crimea, and backed Russian-speaking separatists in the east of the country, crushing Ukrainian forces and creating the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Minsk agreements, intended to end the conflict, would have created a highly decentralised country and, in effect, given Russia a veto over its actions.

A better analogy than the Winter War with Finland may be the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that began in December 1979.

All I can do is to apply history, as there is no model from political science or economics that can really help us here.

1. Do the Russians manage to take Kyiv in a matter of two, three, four weeks or never?

At least one military analyst I respect said late last week that the Russian invasion force has around two weeks left before serious logistical and supply problems force Putin seriously to the negotiating table.

On the other hand, Western media seem over-eager to cover news of Russian reverses, and insufficiently attentive to the harsh fact that the invaders continue to advance on more than one front.

Ukraine is also receiving vital private-sector assistance, notably the delivery of Starlink internet terminals, which are helping maintain communications

Economic warfare between 1914 and 1918 was not a substitute for sending British armies to fight on the European continent, just as it had not been in the Napoleonic Wars against France.

What I cannot tell is whether or not these weapons and other equipment will suffice to sustain Ukrainian resistance over the coming weeks.

But the Ukrainians have no real answers to higher-altitude bombardment and missile attacks.

2. Do the sanctions precipitate such a severe economic contraction in Russia that Putin cannot achieve victory?

I have heard it said that the breadth and depth of the sanctions imposed on Russia make them unprecedented. I disagree

recalls but does not quite match the sanctions that Britain and its allies imposed on Germany at the outbreak of World War

We should remember that those measures did not defeat Germany, however, because — like Russia today — it had the resources to be self-sufficient

Then, as now, it was possible for an increasingly authoritarian government to impose economic controls and divert resources away from civilian consumption to the war effort, while blaming the resulting deprivation on the enemy

It seems there are seven distinct historical processes at work and it’s not clear which is going fastest.

no one should forget that self-sufficiency is possible for Russia, albeit at the price of severe austerity, whether it is a choice or a consequence of war.

China is able to help Russia in ways that could mitigate the economic shock, just as for years it has helped Iran to circumvent U.S. sanctions by buying its oil.

Unlike Soviet citizens, who were accustomed to a state monopoly on communications, today’s Russians have come to rely as much as we do on Big Tech. Being cut off from the metaverse may prove a more psychologically painful deprivation than shortages of imported foods.

even a 35% quarterly decline in gross domestic product does not condemn a country to military defeat if its planes can still fly and its tanks still fire rounds.

3. Does the combination of military and economic crisis precipitate a palace coup against Putin?

I would not bet the fate of Ukraine on Russian internal politics.

The people with the power to arrest Putin are the people he counts on to execute his arrest orders: Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Security Council and, like Putin, a long-serving KGB officer; Sergei Naryshkin, the head of foreign intelligence; and Alexander Bortnikov, who heads the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB.

6. Does the West’s attention deficit disorder kick in before any of this?

If Putin’s goal was to deter members of NATO from offering direct military assistance to Ukraine, it seemed to have some effect.

Russian casualties are being caused by Ukrainians using arms supplied by multiple NATO countries, including the U.S. and Turkey, but they are mostly crossing into Ukraine from Poland. Might Putin therefore strike a target in eastern Poland — Lublin, say, or Przemysl?

he is surely more likely to do so if believes the U.S. would not immediately retaliate in kind against a Russian target. A key lesson of this entire crisis has been that indications of weakness on the U.S. side, which I discussed here last week, have emboldened Putin.

5. Do the Chinese keep Putin afloat but on the condition that he agrees to a compromise peace that they offer to broker?

My guess is that the Chinese make no serious diplomatic move until they are convinced Putin’s invasion is thoroughly bogged down in Ukraine’s spring mud.

4. Does the risk of downfall lead Putin to desperate measures (carrying out his nuclear threat)? 

Remarkably, one U.S. legislator told me last week that he “couldn’t recall an issue more obsessively followed and more unifying among” his constituents.

The only real significance of Western public outrage at Putin’s actions is the political pressure it exerts on Biden and other leaders to take a tougher line with Russia.

7. What is the collateral damage?

History shows that wars (much more than pandemics) are the most common cause of jumps in inflation.

The best-known recent illustration is the way wars in 1973 (Yom Kippur) and 1979 (Iran-Iraq) contributed to the great inflation of the Seventies

these price spikes are not confined to oil and gas but involve a host of other commodities. The prospect of this year’s Ukrainian grain harvest being disrupted means a significant surge in food prices, with all kinds of consequences, especially in developing countries.

A tsunami of war has struck Ukraine. Whether the Russian tide flows or ebbs in the coming weeks will do much to determine the course of world history for the rest of our lives.

Add these seven imponderables together and you see how profoundly important the next few weeks will be.

This is the first big crisis of Cold War II, which is in many ways like a mirror image of Cold War I, with China the senior partner, Russia the junior, and a hot war in Eastern Europe rather than East Asia (it was Korea’s turn in 1950).

I do not know how the crisis will turn out, but I do know it will have profound consequences for the course of the superpower contest.

If the invasion of Ukraine ends in disaster for the heroic defenders of Kyiv and their comrades, another disaster may well follow — and it could occur as far away as Taiwan. Conversely, if there is justice in the world and the disaster befalls the architect of this war, that too will give birth to some fresh and unforeseeable event.

Nor can we ignore the risks that may be lurking within the international financial system.

The failure of the administration to signal that it would retaliate is of a piece with last year’s reports that Biden’s national security team was considering ruling out first use of nuclear weapons in its new national military strategy. Nuclear missiles cease to be a deterrent if one side is unwilling to use them.

Today, however, the boot is on the other foot. Not only is Putin intimidating NATO; he may have achieved something more, namely a tacit admission by the Biden administration that it would not necessarily retaliate with nuclear weapons if Russia used them.

By analysing some additional questions, taken from a survey by the independent pollster the Russian Field Group, we know that about a third of the Russian population constitutes a solid party of war; some 15% support the war with reservations; another 20% support the war but would have preferred it had the war never happened

The pro-war party consists of three main groups: one is in favour of total war and a decisive confrontation with the West; the second believes that Russians are fighting a just war under the banner “responsibility to protect”. The third group mostly supports military action, but they conform possibly because they fear to confront Mr Putin and his supporters.

The second narrative, prevalent on news programmes, emphasises that the “special military operation” in Ukraine is being conducted by professionals to liberate the Russian people of Donbas and other regions. It is presented as a “just war” predicated upon Russia’s responsibility to help Russians in need. Conflict with the West is a secondary consideration.

The first group passionately supports the way because they feel that the enemy is already on Russia’s doorstep; the other two see the threat as far away.

the chaotic nature of the mobilisation is throwing off Mr Putin’s calculations. It has undermined the common man’s confidence in the state machine, its efficiency and its dedication to a common cause. Thus it has undermined the very sense of unity and nationhood that Mr Putin hoped to manipulate. For one thing the mobilisation was announced too late, when Russian troops were already being defeated by Ukrainian ones. For another, it has exposed how the centralised administrative machinery, built by Mr Putin, struggles in an emergency. That is because it is built on corruption and sycophancy, not competence.

Overall, the war’s outcome will depend on the mood of the group who support it and on the group of conformists who go along with it. That is because its most avid proponents, and its most intractable opponents, will not change their minds

If those who see it as a “just” war start to suspect that it is slipping into an existential conflict with the West, or if conformists change their risk calculations because they face being drafted, the balance of opinion may shift decisively.

Since 2014, the U.S. has spent tens of millions of dollars toward arming Ukraine with hardware, software and training to secure its critical infrastructure. Those efforts have ramped up in recent months.

But Russian disinformation has become less effective

When war broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, fake news from Russia flooded over the border with the aim of instilling panic in parts of the country with greater sympathy for Russia, like Crimea, turning them away from the Ukrainian government and toward Russia.

Russian state-owned TV broadcast false stories about "fascists" in the streets of Kyiv, a ban on the Russian language in Ukraine, and looming food riots and rationing. One story, broadcast on Russian state TV, claimed that Ukrainian soldiers had brutally murdered and crucified a three-year-old boy.

Authorities in Kyiv are working to prepare the city

One example: A series of bomb scares were called into Ukrainian schools in recent weeks, but many parents shrugged them off.

Although an invasion feels unlikely to many who live in Kyiv, city officials say they are not as prepared as they'd like to be.

Kyiv has thousands of bomb shelters that date back to the Soviet era, when some of the USSR's nuclear arsenal was based in Ukraine. Over the past several months, authorities have been working to bring as many shelters as possible back into operation. But many are still unusable. Some have been flooded, others are inaccessible. Some shelters have even been taken over by barbershops or bakeries that have set up shop inside. "Authorities will have to take care of this situation and take it more seriously," Mykhailova said.

Ukraine's military has strengthened since 2014

"Ukrainian troops are well-trained, they're well-equipped and they're very motivated. Ukrainians in general and the Ukrainian military are very patriotic. They love Ukraine. They're willing to fight to save it," said Kristina Kvien, the top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv, in an interview with All Things Considered on Friday.

That improvement has come with major help from international donors, primarily the United States. The U.S. has committed more than $5.4 billion in aid to Ukraine since 2014, according to the State Department. About half that total has been security assistance, with the Biden administration announcing another $200 million on Wednesday. Over the years, that military aid has taken many forms: Humvees, patrol boats, counter-artillery radar, a joint training center in western Ukraine.

Many take the daily Ethiopian Airlines flight that originates in Moscow, stopping in Addis Ababa and São Paulo before landing in Buenos Aires—considered a relatively inexpensive route at around $2,500. They usually buy a round-trip ticket but don’t use the return.

The Buenos Aires Health Ministry said at its busiest public hospital, the Fernández Hospital, 85 of the 985 births last year, or 8.6%, were to Russian women. This year through Feb. 14, 38 of the 168 births, or 22.6%, have been babies born to Russian women. At the private Finochietto Hospital, doctors delivered 50 Russian babies in December of the total 180 births recorded, said Dr. Guido Manrique, chief of obstetrics.

Such thinkers had a heyday a century ago, in the European wreckage of World War I: Julius Evola, the mad monk of Italian fascism; Charles Maurras, the reactionary French nationalist; Charles Coughlin, the American radio ranter; and even the author of a German book called “Mein Kampf.”

Putin has followed that counsel to the letter, and he must have felt things were going well when he saw window-smashing rioters in the corridors of the U.S. Congress, Britain’s Brexit from the European Union and Germany’s growing dependence on Russian natural gas.

Alas, a competing sea-based empire of corrupt, money-grubbing individualists, led by the United States and Britain, thwarted Russia’s destiny and brought “Eurasia” — his term for the future Russian empire — low.

Dugin tells essentially the same story from a Russian point of view. Before modernity ruined everything, a spiritually motivated Russian people promised to unite Europe and Asia into one great empire, appropriately ruled by ethnic Russians.

In his magnum opus, “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia,” published in 1997, Dugin mapped out the game plan in detail. Russian agents should foment racial, religious and sectional divisions within the United States while promoting the United States’ isolationist factions. (Sound familiar?) In Great Britain, the psy-ops effort should focus on exacerbating historic rifts with Continental Europe and separatist movements in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Western Europe, meanwhile, should be drawn in Russia’s direction by the lure of natural resources: oil, gas and food. NATO would collapse from within.

Putin has turned to the pages of Dugin’s text in which he declared: “Ukraine as an independent state with certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia,” and “without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.”

So what comes next, should Putin manage to “resolve” Russia’s “problem” in Ukraine? Dugin envisions a gradual dividing of Europe into zones of German and Russian influence, with Russia very much in charge thanks to its eventual stranglehold over Germany’s resource needs. As Great Britain crumbles and Russia picks up the pieces, the empire of Eurasia will ultimately stretch, in Dugin’s words, “from Dublin to Vladisvostok.”

according to Dugin, China, too, must fall. Russia’s ambitions in Asia will require “the territorial disintegration, splintering and the political and administrative partition of the [Chinese] state,” Dugin writes. Russia’s natural partner in the Far East, according to Dugin, is Japan.

Dugin’s 600-page doorstop can be boiled down to one idea: The wrong alliance won World War II. If only Hitler had not invaded Russia, Britain could have been broken. The United States would have remained at home, isolationist and divided, and Japan would have ruled the former China as Russia’s junior partner.