a failure to acknowledge that Putin actually represents the 'pro-Western' alternative in Russia.

NATO expansion would eliminate this entire political platform by repudiating 'Greater Europe' and marginalising Russia.

The West tends towith certain exuberance and optimism due toor even the return of Yeltsin-era policies. The anti-Russian sanctions following Moscow's seizure of Crimea were envisioned to turn the population, business community and political elites against Putin, compelling the president to revise policies.There is now evidence that pressure is indeed mounting on Putin to. The pressure is however not coming from a pro-Western opposition, but the hawks that areThe main question asked in Moscow is why NATO is suddenly amassing its troops in an unprecedented, more than two years after the seizure of Crimea? The prevailing response is thatGeneral Aleksandr Bastrykin, the head of Russia's Investigative Committee, recently warned that. The resulting debate is mountingto reverse what is deemed to be dangerous appeasement of NATO, and instead make preparations for the growing prospect of war. The West's failure to recognise the growing pressure on the Russian president derives fromThe much-neglected reality is that theunder Gennady Zyuganov, and to a lesser extent theunder the leadership of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In the Russian parliament, the only other opposition party represented is 'A Just Russia', a socialist party created in 2006 with the support of the Kremlin.that could siphon off the protest vote that would have gone to the communists. The West's nostalgia for the 1990s under Yeltsin tends to culminate in the support for a political class and oligarchs that are discredited and politically irrelevant.stipulated that Gorbachev's envisionedwas only feasible by committing toYeltsin (and Gorbachev) therefore repeatedly warned thatAs predicted, NATO expansion in March 1999 vindicated the opposition that had been warning theif it walked away from its empire, but would ratherTwelve days after NATO's expansion,Henry Kissinger warned: 'The transformation of the NATO alliance from a defensive military grouping toYeltsin's policies and platform was lost and only radical alternatives remained.