By Leonid Ragozin, The American Conservative, 5/9/26
If you were exclusively on a mainstream Western media diet in recent weeks, you’d be excused for thinking that the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime now lies on its deathbed. Signs of “public discontent” are all over the place, you see. Silicon-lipped beauty blogger Viktoria Bonya attacked the government on YouTube. So did the notorious Kremlin propagandist Ilya Remeslo, fresh from a stint at a psychiatric ward. Meanwhile, the former defense minister Sergey Shoygu might be plotting a coup, according to CNN.
But if you talk to people inside Russia, as this author does on a daily basis, you’ll find them perplexed and doubting the West’s sanity upon hearing about this fresh bout of “Russia is finished” sentiments.
Pretty much all of my interlocutors are strongly anti-Putin and antiwar. In my intelligentsia circle, you need to walk miles to find anyone pro. People do complain about the ongoing economic slowdown, pointing to the closure of some of their favorite small businesses, like boutique fashion brands that had only recently emerged. They are aghast at the Russian government’s (so-far unsuccessful) attacks on popular messaging services and perturbed by mobile internet interruptions in the center of Moscow caused by the Ukrainian drone threat.
But unlike Ukrainians, who live in constant fear of Russian strikes and of press gangs roaming the streets in search of fresh recruits, people in Russia are still enjoying much the same kind of lives as before the war, with living standards comparable to poorer EU member countries (check IMF’s GDP PPP charts).
More than anything, Russians of all political convictions are flabbergasted by the onslaught of irrationally xenophobic and jingoistic pro-Ukrainian propaganda they subject themselves to whenever they turn on their VPNs and check feeds on X and Facebook. What Western government-backed online mobs like NAFO mostly achieve is confirming the Kremlin’s narratives about the West’s inherent hatred of Russia and intent to wipe it off the face of Earth.
Clearly, those Western politicians and opinion makers—like former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who believed that a proxy war against Russia (in Johnson’s own terminology) would upend Putin’s regime were badly wrong and succeeded only in pushing Ukraine under a Russian bulldozer.
So, what would it really take to change Russia for the better?
As an 18-year-old student in 1991, I took part in overthrowing a political regime in Russia. I joined the defense of the White House—the one in Moscow, not Washington, and the seat of Boris Yeltsin’s government at the time—against the coup by hardline Soviet civilian and military leaders.
Our victory resulted in the collapse of the communist system and subsequently of the USSR. The events were driven by public euphoria, particularly on the issue of independence movements in Soviet republics. To give an idea, one of the largest Moscow rallies of 1991—and arguably in the history of Russia—was in support of Baltic independence. As for Ukraine and Belarus, they appeared to us too stubbornly Soviet for refusing to go along with shock therapy reforms which Yeltsin’s government embarked on first thing after dissolving the USSR.
The mass uprisings and burst of optimism became possible for one reason: While Soviet people of 1991 had many realistic fears, including economic collapse, military dictatorship, and Yugoslav-styled civil war, the last thing they feared was the West. Opposite from terrifying, the West was a beacon of hope, if not a freshly adopted political religion.
This effect wasn’t achieved by the U.S. funding Osama bin Laden when he helped Afghan Mujahideen fight the Soviets, nor by the Iran-Contra affair, nor by propping up Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile or fighting Vietcong.
Rather, it was attained through soft power—music, films, quality goods, enviable lifestyles, and an effort by a myriad of Americans and Europeans, often on the left-wing and antiwar side of the aisle—to build bridges and friendships with us, Soviet people. What we saw through our rose-tinted glasses at the time was the West of “We Are the World,” of U2’s album The Joshua Tree, and of transcontinental U.S.-Soviet “TV bridges” hosted by Phil Donahue and Vladimir Pozner.
When the Soviet system collapsed, we definitely didn’t feel defeated, no matter what America’s Cold War hawks said at the time. Instead, there was a sense of victory, achieved jointly with the West.
That sentiment changed radically by the end of the 1990s when economic hardships and domestic security threats sobered people up, while the West had firmly adopted a policy of radical eastward expansion explicitly aimed at isolating and containing, rather than integrating, Russia (read Mary Sarote’s Not One Inch for details).
In 1999, NATO’s bombardment of Yugoslavia prompted Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov to write an op-ed which opened with the latest polling data: 64 percent of Russians now feared NATO and 70 percent believed the attack on Belgrade posed a direct security risk to Russia. Luzhkov, then seen as a presidential hopeful, pointed out that NATO’s expansion and its rising appetite for war were encouraging “sieged fortress” sentiments in Russian society that could lead to self-isolation. He called for social mobilization to overcome the deep economic crisis that dogged Russia throughout that decade and “to revive a strong Russia.”
Although his views at the time were moderately pro-Western, Luzhkov was pictured by Western and Russian media alike as a Communist revanche figure. He was eventually forced out of the race in favor of a little-known intelligence officer chosen as a successor by Boris Yeltsin’s family and preferred by the West—Vladimir Putin.
But Luzhkov’s words turned out to be prescient. The reason these warnings from him and a plethora of Western dignitaries, like U.S. ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, were ignored is a certain Western delusion best captured by a cover headline in the Atlantic from 2001, one year into Putin’s presidency: “Russia is finished.”
That arrogant sentiment informed many ill-fated decisions—Ukraine’s and Georgia’s invitation into NATO at the Bucharest summit in 2008, the endorsement of a forced removal of a democratically elected Ukrainian president at the end of Euromaidan revolution in 2014, and the aggressive crossing of Putin’s red lines in the run-up to Russia’s all-out invasion in Ukraine in 2022.
Fast forward to 2026 and Russia feels less “finished” than ever. Instead, it has evolved into a tech-savvy 21st-century autocracy with a highly modernized war economy. It has successfully adapted to a conflict in which it sees itself as an underdog confronting the mighty Western military industrial machine, which makes it not too concerned about inevitable setbacks. Most importantly, every alternative to Putin seems to pose risks of civil war and state collapse.
To be sure, the country is going through what every Russian would admit to be a difficult period, but Putin’s Russia is showing far fewer “cracks in the regime” than the U.S.-led West, currently torn between Trump-style right-populism and Biden-style left-liberalism.
As the Atlantic’s “Russia is finished” cover turns 25 this month, there is a nagging feeling that it is the West’s own hostility and appetite for conflict which has been the main factor in the rise of Russia’s high-end, 21st-century authoritarianism. Conversely, it is a return to the era of detente and soft power which could reverse this trend and change Russia for the better. But how many Ukrainians and Russians need to die in a senseless and avoidable war to prove the obvious?
For those interested in the historical roots of Western, anti-Russian racism and propaganda, I recommend “Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria” by Swiss author Guy Mettan. The story goes back 1000 years to the religious schism that split Christianity, and where all “Easterners” (Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews) were demonized. It brings into focus this racist ideology of domination which is used to justify the settler-colonial mindset and Western imperialism. And best of all, it’s a much easier read (i.e. less academic) than Edward Said’s “Orientalism”.
It is interesting that the author can’t directly blame Western expansionism and aggression for Russia’s current stance but can only admit to a “nagging feeling” that the “West’s own hostility and appetite for conflict” has “been the main factor”. The author can’t admit that the USA — which routinely engages in genocide (Gaza), in sneak attacks (Iran), coups (too many to name), piracy (Iran, Venezuela, Cuba), extrajudicial murder (Caribbean), and economic attacks (Nord Stream and sanctions on dozens of countries), is the sources of Russia’s defensive stance to protect its autonomy and sovereignty.
Lastly, in the author’s ending recommendation: “Conversely, it is a return to the era of detente and soft power which could reverse this trend and change Russia for the better” — one can’t help but hear an exceptionalist Western sentiment — that it is the West’s job to “change Russia for the better.” He fails to understand that Western domination ideology, at its neoliberal/neocon core, can’t stomach “sovereignty and autonomy” in any other nation-states. Such sovereignty would protect nations from Western exploitation, and that exploitation is needed to maintain the project of capitalist expansion.
Your comment is as worthwhile a read as the essay itself. I did pick up Said’s Orientalism and set it aside after a few chapters. That was maybe 3 years ago, so your Mettan book recommendation is appreciated.
In April 2022 I mentioned to an acquaintance that the Russia-Ukraine conflict was (1) a civil war within Ukraine between Ukrainian nationalists and Russian-Ukrainians, (2) a proxy war between NATO and Russia, (3) a proxy war between the US and China, and (4) a conflict between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
At that time, it was not yet apparent to me just how deep and broad Russophobia is in the West. In North America, it seems to me that this is the result of a decades-long propaganda campaign by the American foreign policy establishment in collusion with the Ukrainian nationalist diaspora. The German antipathy to Russia is clearly based in Germany being defeated mainly by the USSR in WW2 and Czarist Russia being the enemy in WW1. French hostility to Russia seems opportunistic, while Poland’s is based in various historical resentments.
As for the UK, Russophobia is extreme, at least in the upper echelons of society. The Russian Empire as an obstacle to the expansion of the British Empire is a factor. The loss of British assets to Communist Russia is yet another. The White Russian and Polich diasporas in the UK are also influences. I suspect that it comes down to money. If Russia were to be decisively defeated, and split up into several republics as a result, it seems likely that certain legal claims on Russian assets would materialize, being rooted in the nationalization of these assets by the Lenin regime mainly at the expense of British interests. These paper claims have probably been traded around in London for the last century, and could be exponentially profitable in the event of a Russian collapse. (as in 100:1 or likely far higher).
But to your point, European Russophobia is so deep in history, it’s hard to know where to start looking, and I’m convinced that it truly began when Vladimir the Great chose Byzantium instead of Rome in 988. Then the Great Schism in 1054, and the First Crusade in 1095 and subsequent crusades, which had the byproduct of weakening Byzantium. The year 1439 and the Council of Florence are key. This is when the Byzantines agreed to reunite with Rome under the papacy in order to withstand the Ottoman threat. But Russia’s Vasily II rejected the union and in 1448 Moscow asserted independence from Constantinople, which fell to the Ottomans in 1453, at which point Moscow declared itself as the 3rd Rome, believing Russia to be the last remaining, pure guardian of true Christianity, and this perspective drove Russian identity, foreign policy, and imperial expansion for the next several centuries.
Anyway, these are my suspicions about the roots of Russophobia. I’ll get the Mettan book and see what he has to say about all this.
Russophobia belongs to those when using this regime propaganda expression, who deny the Russian people a normal, free and civilsed life as every other people in Europe.
When foreigners taking this attitude against a brutal regime which is also actually destroying its own country from inside – that is the true ”Russophobia”, not human civilized critisism against Russian war crimes, defending International Law, (the judgement from United Nations Court of Justice in Den Haag, Holland, judging in February 2022 that the Russian war invasion was completely illegal, the fire must cease immidistely and all military forces must return immidistely to the international Russian-Ukrainian border of 1991) and demanding that the dictatorship the Russian and Belarusian peoples living under must be defeated.
That is giving the Russian people Liberty. The real and true Russophobia is denying the Russians its Liberty and a free life in justice and peace.
Tony Oostenbrink – I think you will enjoy Mettan’s book and find confirmation of your own deep understanding of that history. Here are a few quotes from Mettan’s book:
“Russia upsets the image the West has of itself and the world. The clash between the West’s idealized image of itself and its harsh reality as viewed by Russia clarifies the Western psychological need for demonization of Russia.” p98
“Suddenly after 1815, Russia Becomes a Threat … ‘The contradictory sequel of nearly three centuries of consistently friendly relations, this hostility found expression in the Crimean War. … And in the three primary holocausts of modern times, in which among the major powers Great Britain alone escaped defeat, her victory thrice depended on the military collaboration of Russia. Why then did Russophobia became a persistent British sentiment?’ … lucid and premonitory, so much so that they remain relevant sixty-five years after their formulation and perfectly match the American and European Russophobia of this beginning of the 21st century. Why did Russia, which three times had saved the western world, then at a time when she did not or not any longer represent a threat to it, and even now still, generate so much hatred and hostility in Western media, universities and chancelleries?”p178-9
“… if the deterioration of relations was due to an accumulation of misunderstandings, why wasn’t anything done to dispel them? If they persisted, it must be that there were powerful interests that tried to make them last. … It shows who a nation allied to Russia against a redoubtable common enemy could transmute within a few years into a Russophobic nation even though neither its direct interests, nor its borders, nor its internal security were under threat. … , it took only a few months for an Anglo-Saxon empire to again launch into a merciless battle against the Russian ally and into a propaganda war which has yet to dry out seventy years later. … English and American Russophobia was primarily engendered by the imperial ambitions of these two countries and by their irrepressible drive to dominate the world.”p201-2
“To convince, manipulating words is not enough. … An easy myth must be fabricated that will lodge in the collective imagination. … This myth has a function … to ‘substitute the truth to better calm apprehensions and provide explanations that bring back tranquility … ‘a narrative on reality whose function is to justify the past and the present.’ … the metanarrative must also transform the past. … The main mission of memory occultation is to wipe out any traces of the positive historical role of Russia in Europe … building the myth of Euro-Atlantic union by opposing it to the myth of the threatening Russian bear … If NATO were to be viewed as aggressive, rather than Russia, the entire construction of the myth would collapse. … the same experts, tirelessly repeat the same refrain: Putin is a villain, Russia wants to invade us.”p310-312
The Russian people deserve its freedom. Its free speech, its Liberty from repression, prisons, truth in this life and liberation from this right-wing gangster capitalism stealing the future from the Russian people. All Russians deserve economical and social justice, human decency, pride and a true life in peace.
We Europeans will wait for you, all Russians. We will support you when you are ready for a new future. For your Liberty, Egality and Fraternity.
”MORALITY IS STRONGER THAN TYRANTS”(Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, French republican revolutionary 1767-1794).
Johan – I think if you replace “Russian” with “American” in that first paragraph, it works pretty well – especially the part about “right-wing gangster capitalism stealing the future” – a perfect description of Trump. What I wonder is how long it will take for Europeans to unhitch from the genocidal Trump-Netanyahu train which seems determined to sow chaos, start wars, and destroy the global economy utilizing the same MSM finger pointing it employed after the US destroyed Nord Stream — “cause they know if you’re doing the pointing, nobody’s looking at you” Todd Snider