There's various comments flying around about "Russia has a hypersonic missile" and so on, and it makes me kinda tear my hair.
Putin is a product of late Soviet strategic thinking, which is fundamentally
defensive. (A country that gets invaded a lot tends to think that way.)
The issue of being surrounded with missile defenses and not able to maintain MAD is absolutely critical, because Putin knows what happens then, and it's the 90s, from which Russia hasn't (and likely never shall) recover. US missiles in Ukraine are too close to defend against. Same with Finland, the Baltics, the whole old Soviet periphery is too close to Moscow. Anything based there is too close to recognize and stop in time. So priority zero is restoring MAD.
Putin's core -- and, really, only -- strategic problem is "who has enough nukes to destroy Russia?"
Israel doesn't, quite. (Hurt, badly, yes; meet the old Cold War criteria for "could destroy", no, especially as all of Israel is one bomb wide and two bombs long.)
France does.
The UK does.
China does.
The US does.
Putin does not give the proverbial rodent hindquarters about opposing democracy, manipulating the economy, or any other such thing. Putin cares about removing the ability to nuke Russia. Once that problem is solved -- and ONLY once that problem is solved -- does he have the strategic freedom to address his periphery, his cash flow issues, and the migration problem out of Central Asia.
So; Brexit has nothing to do with destabilizing the EU. It has to do with getting the UK's nuclear arsenal under proxy control. Same with Trump. (Damaging the US' world standing is nice, but it's not necessary. Getting the nukes under proxy control is
necessary.)
China? China's completely doomed by climate change, isn't inclined to pick fights, is going to have the same Central Asia migration problem, and may not have as many nukes as they say they do. China is not in an aggressive posture; China is in a resource panic. Putin's perfectly capable of looking at where those graphs cross and not worrying about China.
France? Well, France is next. We can see France being next; asymmetric information warfare is something to which the French have a lot of vulnerability. It's still not about the EU; it's about getting a hard-right satrap in place who will guarantee the Force de Frappe won't be used on Russia.
