His goal was to peel those countries away from Western-style democracy and return them to Russia’s coercive sphere of influence. ... Putin is using many tools at his disposal to realize the goal of weakening Western democracy. ..…

In the First Republic (1918–1933), he saw not only the incompetence of the various governments, the totalitarian menace of socialism, and German nationalism — racism degenerating into National Socialism, but also the bottomless ignorance and weakness of the Western Powers, which gave the small..…