‘This is the world Putin wants to live in’ BBC News Russia tells the story of how Moscow’s diplomacy apparatus deteriorated — Meduza
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Nearly a year and a half after the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, why hasn’t diplomacy managed to stop the bloodshed? Journalists from BBC News Russia sought to answer this question by talking to analysts and former government employees from both Russia and the U.S. What emerged was a story of Russian diplomats increasingly seeking to please Putin as the Russian leader himself became ever more convinced of the power of brute force and the irrelevance of diplomacy. Meduza shares an English-language summary of the report.

In March 2000, Vladimir Putin said that Russia was ready to work with NATO “all the way up to the point of joining the alliance,” explaining that he couldn’t imagine a Russia that was “isolated from Europe.”