The alienation of post-Cold War Russia has proceeded in waves.
Each successive Western overreach for not just maintaining but expanding its global hegemony has produced a new wave of Russian alienation. What will probably be the last wave, one that might help spark a wave of ultra-nationalism afterward has begun. This new wave is alienating the West's last base of support for Russian democratization and international cooperation: Russia's liberals.
The alienation of Russia began with the West's failure to significantly assist Russia during its very great depression and talk of NATO expansion in the early 1990s but was staunched somewhat by the then still unbroken Western promise not to expand NATO beyond reunited Germany.
This alienated a large part of the elite. The second wave of Russian alienation began with the first round of NATO expansion in 1997.
This wave alienated a large minority to slim majority of the Russian population, depending on which opinion surveys one looks at. A third wave was sparked by the West's bombing of Belgrade in 1999, which
incited alienation among a strong majority to overwhelming majority of the population, depending again on which polls one sites. In the 2000s, during the Putin era,
each succeeding small wave of Russian alienation and opposition to NATO - such as those sparked by additional rounds of NATO expansion, Western meddling in Georgia and Ukraine, including the Maidan revolt - the level of alienation and opposition bumped up a bit and then receded to its previous level, making few inroads among Russian liberals, the last bastion of pro-Western sentiment in Russia today. Now, with the recent largely American hysteria regarding Putin trolls being behind every Facebook post, Tweet, and Christmas tree (not to mention every Democratic party election failure and Clinton expose),
even Russian liberals are waking up to the West's double standards and even to the West's provocation of, and cover up of the dark side of the Maidan revolt (the neofascists' snipers massacre of their 'own' demonstrators) and efforts to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad by using jihadists.
Now, the unprecedented US media disinformation campaign has portrayed a Russia that even Russian liberals cannot recognize: Putin is Hitler, Russia is fascist, they want to conquer all of Europe. Who knew?
Comment: A shameful turn of events now compounded by even more despicable choices from the US Empire.
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