The Modern Russia

Writing in The Atlantic, Brian Whitmore contrasts today's Russia with the former Soviet Union.

Unlike the Soviet Union, today’s Russia isn’t an ideological power seeking global hegemony through military expansion. It is essentially a crime syndicate masquerading as a state. Putin and the made men who make up his inner circle deploy corruption as a tool of statecraft in order to perpetuate their rule, expand their reach, and enrich themselves.

Thus, they seek not ideological converts but co-conspirators or accomplices, easy enough to find in the widely corrupt third world.