Based on...some trends I've been seeing lately on Twitter, I should give a gentle reminder that part of Putin's actual "strategy book" explicitly calls on goading on extremists on ALL sides. A thread (this also explains some of Putin's guanopsychosis): 1/x
So, Putin is a fan of a number of far-right neofascists (and the occasional paleo-religiofascist, like Ivan Ilyin: https://t.co/o6h87YLaNv) but one that's come out a lot is...Aleksandr Dugin: https://t.co/O4S4EET30V 2/x
foreignaffairs.com/articles/russi…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr…
So, Dugin started out as a Bolshevik nationalist, and then pretty much just turned full-on fascist over time, and he wrote a book called "Foundations of Geopolitics" that has proved surprisingly influential in Russian planning https://t.co/3ZBjZyTu42 3/x
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundatio…
In fact, "Foundations of Geopolitics" is especially influential in the Russian military, as well as among Putin's inner circle: https://t.co/07NCn9laV8 https://t.co/rqWywR1aTZ And there's a lot of evidence they're using this as a functional playbook and have for a while 4/x
hoover.org/research/russi…
foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/27/geo…
So one strategy actually promoted in the book is to split the US by ramping up extremism on both sides. Most of what we've seen is w/ the far right (Russia partnering w/ Christian Nationalist groups internationally, and with racist-right groups like League of teh South) 5/x
but the book also pushes riling up and explicitly supporting *all* extremist dissident movements as long as it can create severe social division (explaining why tankies have a certain tag trending; yes, the GRU plays them as much as does the World Congress of Families). 6/x
It's also worth noting, in the context of the present Russian invasion of Ukraine, that...pretty much everywhere Putin's threatened so far in Europe is considered a major target. This includes even countries NOT historically part of the USSR, but the old Russian Empire 7/x
Weirdly, it doesn't talk of invading Poland (too Catholic?) or Estonia, but Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland as well as pretty much all of the Balkans to Romania is considered Russian (and there's religious stuff with teh latter) 8/x
A few days ago I did a mini-thread on how the Russian Orthodox Church is basically forcing a schism within Greek Orthodoxy; essentially Russian Nationalists want to establish Moscow as the "third Rome" https://t.co/aI46NEGjiy (and yes, the Ukraine invasion ties into this) 9/x
So I won't retype all that. What's especially relevant is what "Foundations of Geopolitics" proposes for Georgia (split asunder into a mess of potemkin republics), most of the USSR being forcibly re-incorporated (save Estonia & Azerbaijan)...and special venom re Ukraine 10/x
To whit: "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness..." 11/x
"...its 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". If Putin isn't using this as the playbook I'll eat my hat 12/end
