What each president was slow to learn was that Russia was more interested in restoring the great-power status it lost in 1991 than in becoming the partner the United States hoped it would be. This was especially true once Vladimir Putin became president on New Year’s Eve 1999. As Putin deepened his hold on power in the early 2000s, he accelerated Russia’s military modernization. A ruler who referred to the demise of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” set about restoring what he believed was Russia’s rightful place in the global balance of military
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