I still wonder how #Russia under #Putin, Putin and his circle, and their apologists in the South and West could ever come up with the idea that NATO and "the West" were out to "encircle" and "subdue" Russia. If you want to bring down a country, you don't first engage in economic relationships with it or make yourself dependent on it in crucial areas of #infrastructure and #energy. Assuming Putin to be a rational player – a murderous one, but still – he must have clearly seen that delivery of raw materials to the West was increasing, not decreasing Russia's security. Not even a NATO membership of Ukraine and Georgia could endanger Russia given the scale of Western dependency. Thus, the Greater Russia chimera with the corresponding conspiracy idea of the West wanting to "extinguish" Russia is the fantasy of a drama queen that cannot accept that Russia is a banal and mediocre state with little else to offer than raw materials and conflict. Putin needed to concoct interrelationships of historical, existential, and religous dimensions because he seemingly couldn't accept that after 20 years in power (various positions), his only achievement had been the creation of a mafia-state for his self-enrichment. But the country itself had become a failure, and so, irrespective of his riches, he himself. (Since 2007 I would argue.) And so he started it. A genocidal war on a sovereign neighbouring state, to ease his feelings of inferiority as man and head of state.