The new standard line, that when Russia is weakened by internal division, then it is prey to outside forces, has obvious advantages for a government keen to encourage unity and paint the opposition as unpatriotic. Indeed, Putin actively seeks to portray the outside world as trying to work with and through separatists, antigovernment campaigners and other political enemies precisely to create that kind of disunity and vulnerability: “they would gladly let Russia follow the Yugoslav scenario of disintegration and dismemberment.”
