RUSSIA'S MANIFEST DESTINY

This one had me puzzled for a while. We know that America is "the indispensable country" - God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America~Otto von Bismarc.

Russia’s Manifest Destiny

We can pit Patriach Krill head of the Russian Orthodox church in Moscoe, against the Pope in Rome:

Krill

"Russia has never attacked anyone — it’s amazing that such a great and powerful country has only ever defended its borders” 

"May God grant that our country remains like this till the end of the century: strong, powerful, and loved by God. . . May the Lord protect our Russian land from internecine strife and invasion by foreigners, and strengthen the Orthodox faith, the only spiritual force that can truly hold our people together.”

Pope

The Pope deplored the “macabre regression of humanity” taking place in Ukraine, and demanded an end to “continued military and verbal escalation” and the “perverse spiral of weapons”.

Manifest destiny

What is this, Russia's "manifest destiny"?

Sea power and land powers, from Athens v Sparta to Russia v America, are fated to clash. The global seat of land power — inner Eurasia aka "the Homeland", the territory of the Russian Empire — is forever  in global competition with the sea power, the United States, reprrsented in Europe by the UK, the "rimpower".

Alexander Dugin is or was a right wing intellectual and bohemian, who emerged from the time of Perestroika in the the 80s as Russia’s chief nationalist.

Russia's MVV (after Dugin, as adopted from Mackinder):

MISSION An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty to expand out of the (indefensible) Eurasian plain, over the nine gateways (Baltic, Polish gap, Suwalki gap, Carpathian mountaims, Bassarabian ....), over and into Central European plain and on to the warm waters and defeat the sea people (originally UK, but now updated to the Atlantic power: the States.

VISION To redeem and remake the West in the image of Russian Orthodoxyianism...I might be wrong on this one. This is about what system of governance you want: authoritarian or democratic.

VALUES The special virtues of the Russian people (not vodkism, please) and their institutions (somewhat personalised by dear Putin, but then there was Stalin as the gold standard in dictatorship).

This follows a routine SWOT analysis based in the reality that 

GEOGRAPHY IS FATE

There are many determinants of foreign policy. Geography is the most deterministic of constraints.

The Rus were dealt a really poor hand. They are like The Hordes, a people of the plains, the Eurasian landmass is their land. The plain continues to the West onto the plain of central Europe, with - as I see it so maybe I've misunderstood - defensive natural barriers for Russia, but these are just beyond Russia's grasp.  Russia has 2,000 kilometers of long and vulnerable borderland rhat it must defend to stop any invasion from a well-funded and technologically sophisticated Western European sea-power.

What are these natural defences? The Carpathian mountains - but alas, they're in Romania! Access to the Black Sea - it's in Ukraine! (or was). The Suwalki Gap which also gives access to the Baltic Sea - it's the other side of the Balkans (but Russia has Kaliningrad at the other end of the Gap - see a map)!

And so on - there are nine such gateways that enemies use to invade (identified in a Zeihan Youtube pres.), and Russia must have them under lock and key, to feel secure. They'd need to plug the Transnistra gap in tiny Moldova. It's been invaded by the Swedes through the three Baltic countries so there are three NATO countries Putin would also need to invade (was he really planning this? Surely not.), the French through Belarus, twice by the Germans through the Polish gap, the Bessarabian gap in Romania favoured by the Turks. Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia complete the nontep.

Geography means Russia's manifest destiny is to expand westwards into central Europe, a messianic duty or survival necessity as you wish, and capture the nine gateways. 

So it's not about personal ambition or nationalism or imperialism or historic revenge, it is a purely rational strategy to ensure national survival, it is about Russia's understandable insecurity.