President Vladimir Putin's Vision of Mother Russia

Russia President Vladimir Putin is easy to understand. He wants to restore the glory and power of Mother Russia. He wants the Russia of 1914 without the tsars. Vladimir is like his neighbor Recip Erdogan of Turkey. Recip wants to go back to the glory of the Ottomans without the Ottomans. He wants the old borders back, almost all of them. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania Finland He’ll take more of Poland if he could. The Ukraine and not just the Crimea Georgia and the caucuses Moldova Mongolia would be nice He’ll pass on the “stans;” they’re too rebellious, but he would exert controlling influence over their economies and politics over satraps. That goes for Belarus and the Balkans as well. He is not going to give the Kurile Islands back to Japan He wants to repress from Russian history the eight decades of Communism, especially the Stalin period. And maybe with the chaos in the Mideast and Turkey, he could finally achieve the goal of the tsars – control over the Turkish Straits He’ll love to see an increasingly weakened and humiliated United States, the collapse of NATO, and the end of sanctions. His biggest prize, a figment of his imagination and wildest dreams, is Alaska, and perhaps even Fort Ross in California. What he needs are rising oil and natural gas prices.