My next take on Putin’s strategy.

“…Modern democracies enjoy advantages that Russia’s authoritarian system has failed to reproduce on anything like the same scale: advanced economies, complex systems of international cooperation, reasonably effective institutions, mechanisms of public accountability and the ability to correct their own mistakes.

These advantages are far from perfect. They are vulnerable, and from time to time they become the source of serious crises. But they are precisely what allows democracies to remain resilient and achieve results that more closed and less flexible systems cannot.

The very existence of alternatives that outperform its own political model irritates the Kremlin. That model rests on concentrating power, suppressing competition and restricting public oversight. And since the Kremlin cannot compete with those alternatives on fair terms, it has chosen another route: persuading everyone that all political systems are equally bad, that no institution can be trusted, that politicians everywhere are liars, that international law works only for the powerful and that every democracy is bound to end in chaos.

The Kremlin doesn’t need people to start trusting it. It’s more than enough if they stop trusting everyone else. In the Kremlin’s view, that would significantly reduce its competitors’ advantages…”

Russia Can’t Win. So It Wants Everyone to Lose