While all this was going on—while Putin entrapped Germany as well as other countries in Europe with Russian natural gas—he also divided them by encouraging European populist leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and France’s Marine Le Pen, leaders who, like Putin himself, believed in the reality of the ethnic nation above that of the individual. Given all this, Putin believed that a quick and successful invasion of Ukraine would forge a permanent alliance with a weakened and insecure Germany, practically dislodging it from the West, which would have the indirect effect of further undermining
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