Putin’s Power Projection: It’s All About Energy and the Black Sea
Russia’s president knows exactly what he wants, and it’s not eastern Ukraine. His interests are all about oil and gas and supply routes. The rest is smoke and mirrors.TBLISI, Georgia-What is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grand strategy? It may get lost in the headlines about the murder of an opposition leader just outside the Kremlin walls and the grinding horrors of the Ukraine war, but from the shores of the Black Sea here in Georgia the outlines are painfully obvious.
While the world’s attention has focused on eastern Ukraine over the last year, the Kremlin has been maneuvering to take something far more valuable than the war-torn sliver of outdated industrial territory known as Donbass around Luhansk and Donetsk.
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