1984 in 2014: A new propaganda war underpins the Kremlin’s clash with the West

[Igel]

2. He planned for a contingency.

That's what you plan for.

Unless the FSB sent in diversionary groups to engineer the Euromaidan's late-January evolution and the following events, the excuses offered by Putin wouldn't have been available. The planning wouldn't have been useful in the short-term, and may not have worked out for many years. Kiselev, in fact, might have moved on. Putin plans for the long-term. We see that as a constant criticism of the West--we plan short term for the most part. We hear it from Islamists, we hear it from Russophiles, we hear it from all sorts of folk. Perhaps one day we'll learn. We used to plan long-term rather well. Something broke along the way.

Still, let's not make the foe superhuman. He just hasn't forgotten something we used to know; perhaps we can re-learn that skill. I doubt it, though: It takes a certain amount of elitism to look over the current situation and say that short-term loss is fine if it yields short-term gain. Those who mostly feel the objective effects of the short-term loss are likely to be in the bottom half of the income spectrum, which is decidedly more than 1/2 of the population.