The Putin regime began with a big lie and is ending with another one.
The first — that Chechen separatists were responsible for false flag apartment bombings in 1999 — is still widely believed. The second — that Putin, not his double, has been Russia’s face for the past two years — has not been fully exposed.
Bookended by monumental deceits, the current Kremlin regime has unsurprisingly spent its quarter century in power operating under false pretences. Trade, investment and partnership were only stratagems. The main task was invasion and subversion.
The 2008 financial crisis dimmed Russia’s economic lustre. The first 2014 invasion of Ukraine killed it altogether. Russia’s all-out 2022 onslaught made the country a renegade and was mostly defeated by Ukraine. After three years of stalemate, Trump, China and Iran now seem unable to save Russia from the reckoning ahead.
A strategy of conquest and destruction only works for autocrats so long as the roof continues to fall in on their antagonists. Moldova showed that even the most aggressive forms of Russian hybrid war and active measures have their limits. The Kremlin nihilists are in the doldrums.
(‘Putin’ reads notes to FSB director, defence minister Belousov and senior general staff officers in St. Petersburg, October 7th 2025)
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