West’s Existence as an Alternative Only Real Threat to Russian Sovereignty as Putin Understands It, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 8 – Russia’s nuclear arsenal means that the West does not threaten it with attack or occupation, Vladimir Pastukhov says; and when Putin talks about the need to defend Russia against such an attack, he is really talking about the need to defeat the West so that it does not continue to provide a model for Russia’s development at odds with his own.

            What the Kremlin leader means when he talks about the defense of Russian sovereignty, the London-based Russian analyst says, is that the country must act to preserve his personal power as well as that of his entourage and their descendants over it (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=62F25A78E6748&section_id=50A6C962A3D7C).

            “The only real threat from the West,” Putin believes and with some justice, Inozemtsev says, is “not its direct or indirect intervention but the very fact of its existence as an alternative political model … which can lead to change in power within Russia and the rise of people other than those who have been controlling the country since the start of the 2000s.”

            That is a real possibility, the Russian analyst says. What remains an open question is whether the fact that Putin and his entourage have so identified themselves with Russia that they are now ready to go to war on behalf of this “messianic fantasy” to defend their positions. But if they are, they won’t be defending Russia or in the end even themselves.