The Russians, or the Putin administration in particular, are in an existential war at this point. Of course totalitarian regimes exist to keep the totalitarian

The Russians, or the Putin administration in particular, are in an existential war at this point. Of course totalitarian regimes exist to keep the totalitarian regime in power, at the expense if necessary of everything else. But the Russian state is comprised of the core ethnic Russian territory, which we think of as Russia, but then also have a VERY large population and land exposure of the -Stans as vassal states to be exploited. None of those stans want to be with Russia. Of course for Russia, losing control of those provinces will mean exposure on all sides from continental invasion, a massive loss of resources and wealth, and worst of all would motivate the regime to be toppled as weak. It would be foolish to think the Russians aren't doing it. There was demonstrable evidence of them interfering in the Clinton-Trump election. There is hints of substantial dark money sloshing around Washington from China and Russia. Why would there not, when Saudi (notice how almost every President goes to Saudi Arabia to kiss ass at the end of their terms?) and Israeli already is, although those are more clear geopolitical interests. Because the quiet agreement on both sides of the aisle is "don't stop any money trains", there isn't the proper attention on this influence, but the Ukraine funding holdup, which was really funny money accounting of valuing old stockpiles being pulled from warehouses that was going to just be scrapped in the near future anyway, was a bizarre political event. To me that really felt like Russian dark money, because the Ukrainians were basically kept without ammo for months and months and the Russians made substantial gains. Why would they not? Regardless, the current administration is still showing weakness and taking it. The Russians are constantly escalating the war, and are now shipping in foreign North Korean troops, and NATO should respond in kind with its own direct troop assistance. The Russians have for decades bragged about fomenting discontent in foreign powers, ironically as their country has economically and demographically faded. We supposedly have invested in state of the art information warfare, but the weakness is that we SUPPOSEDLY can't turn those weapons on our population, while our main opponents can use their capabilities at will domestically or internationally.