How the Kremlin thinks: Russia's strategic culture and the war for consciousness

Jack Snyder: founder of the theory

The founder of this theory was Jack Snyder, who first used the term in his 1977 report "The Soviet Strategic Culture" for the RAND Corporation. The purpose of the report was to explain the irrationality of Soviet approaches: why the Soviet leadership thinks differently from the US about limited nuclear war. Snyder's report was revolutionary because it challenged the then-dominant "rationalism" (game theory) in the West, according to which all players should act identically under identical circumstances.

Snyder claimed that American strategists were mistaken in believing that their Soviet counterparts thought as they did. Unlike the Western approach, in which war is a mathematical equation of costs and benefits, in the Soviet Union, war was a product of historical experience, geography, and political structure.

He defined strategic culture as a set of ideas, emotional responses, and habitual patterns of behavior that members of a strategic community have acquired through learning and imitation. Accordingly, strategic decisions are made not in an intellectual vacuum, but through the prism of previous victories and defeats (especially the experience of World War II).

Jack Snyder identified several key differences.

Offensiveness. Soviet culture tended toward active, aggressive actions, even in nuclear strategy. The concept of "deterrence" was perceived differently in Moscow — not as a passive threat, but as a readiness to strike first if war was inevitable.

Nuclear weapons as "mega artillery". For the Soviet leadership, this was not just a political tool. The USSR was preparing not only for "mutual destruction," but for survival and victory in a nuclear conflict.

The role of institutions. Strategic culture is formed within bureaucratic structures. Since the army had a monopoly on strategic thinking in the USSR, it imposed its vision on the entire leadership: "war is an inevitable tool of class struggle".

Colin S. Gray: strategy as anthropology

The next researcher, Colin S. Gray, developed Snyder's ideas, transforming "strategic culture" from an analytical tool into a fundamental philosophy. While Jack Snyder focused on bureaucracy, Gray looked at the problem more broadly — through the prism of history and anthropology.

He claimed that strategy cannot be "extra-cultural". Strategists are people who have grown up in a particular linguistic, religious, and historical environment. Unlike researchers who believed that culture only "influences" strategy, Gray insisted that strategy is culture. You cannot separate strategic choices from the cultural code of the person making those choices.

STRATEGY CANNOT BE "EXTRA-CULTURAL"

Colin S. Gray paid close attention to how geography shapes strategic culture. In the case of Russia, he highlighted the problem of the lack of natural borders. This gave rise to a culture of "expansion for security". To feel secure, Russia must control its neighbors by creating buffer zones. The continental mentality also became an important element. Russia is a typical Heartland, whose strategic culture is based on territorial control rather than maritime dominance or soft power.

For Colin S. Gray, there was no fundamental difference between the Muscovite Tsardom, the Russian Empire, and the USSR. He believed that Russian strategic culture was characterized by the belief that only strong, centralized power could save the country from chaos. This led to the perception of military power as the only reliable instrument of diplomacy.

For Russian strategists, "respect" in international relations is synonymous with "fear". Colin S. Gray was a "strategic pessimist": he warned that the fall of communism would not change these codes, as they are rooted much deeper than Marxism-Leninism. Unfortunately, these warnings were largely ignored.

Fritz Ermarth: siege mentality

The theme of "siege mentality" became central to Fritz Ermarth's works. With his experience at the top of the US intelligence community (in particular, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council), Ermarth brought a purely pragmatic dimension to the theory.

He claimed that Russia feels like "an island in a hostile sea". Unlike the US, which is protected by oceans, Russia is vulnerable on all sides. This creates a "besieged fortress" mentality, where any outside influence is perceived as subversive. The authorities use this mentality to justify authoritarianism: "If we are under siege, we cannot afford discord".

IF RUSSIA DOES NOT DOMINATE ITS NEIGHBORS, IT BEGINS TO DECLINE IN ITS OWN UNDERSTANDING

Fritz Ermarth emphasized that it is irrelevant to Russian strategy whether the threat is real from the West's perspective. What matters is that the Kremlin considers it real. When NATO refers to a "defensive alliance", Russian culture automatically translates this as an "instrument of encirclement".

The analyst also noted that Russia's foreign policy is a continuation of the regime's internal survival. To maintain its status as a "great power", Russia is forced to constantly demonstrate its strength. If it does not dominate its neighbors, it begins to decline in its own understanding.

According to Ermarth, Russian strategic culture sees no boundary between peace and war. Peace is simply a phase of preparation for the next stage of confrontation or waging war by other means.

Cultural matrix

If, after the collapse of the USSR, studies of Russia's strategic culture were considered "antiquated", then 2012 marked their revival. Putin's return to the Kremlin and his open ideological break with the West demonstrated that Russian strategy is not a temporary regime, but a deep cultural matrix. This led to the emergence of a whole galaxy of new researchers who began to study not only Russian military equipment, but also Russian "metaphysics of war".

The period from 2008 to 2011 (Dmitry Medvedev's presidency) was marked by the slogan of "modernization". Western elites, especially Barack Obama's administration with its reset policy, believed in the rationality of Russian "businessmen in power". It was believed that Russia was ready to exchange its imperial ambitions for technological renewal (the Skolkovo project and partnerships with Boeing and Cisco).

Even the Munich speech and the war against Georgia in 2008 were perceived by the Western establishment as unfortunate excesses that should not prevent Russia from joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2012.

However, instead of the expected liberalization, dependence was instrumentalized: Russia used access to markets not for westernization, but to strengthen its own strategic code, turning trade into a weapon (energy blackmail).

It is on this paradox that Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky, experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, base their harshest conclusion: the West has fundamentally overestimated the power of economic incentives.

The Russian elite perceived Western investment not as a tool for development, but as a "resource rent" or "tribute" that allowed the Kremlin to finance its repressive apparatus and buy the loyalty of the elites. Thus, economic integration didn’t weaken the authoritarian vertical of , but rather strengthened it by providing necessary financial resources for future confrontation.

Thus, economic integration with the West didn’t weaken the authoritarian vertical of power, but rather strengthened it

These researchers embody a conservative, realistic view of Russian strategic culture, closely aligned with Colin S. Gray's ideas. The report by Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky (in particular, their landmark work "Thirty Years of U.S. Policy Toward Russia: Can the Vicious Circle Be Broken?", 2019) is effectively a "death certificate" for the era of liberal optimism.

These theses were later confirmed in a fundamental study by the CNA analytical organization, "Etched in Stone: Russian Strategic Culture and the Future of Transatlantic Security" (2020), whose main authors and editors are Andrew Monaghan and Michael Kofman. It argues that Russia's strategic objectives have remained virtually unchanged since the days of the empire.

The authors argue that, despite the change of flags, the fundamental attitudes of the Russian elite remain static. Putin's Russia is guided by the same geopolitical imperatives as Peter the Great or Joseph Stalin. This is not the choice of an individual leader, but the "collective unconscious" of the Russian security apparatus. These attitudes are "set in stone" by geography and history, making them almost impossible to change through external efforts.

According to researchers, Russia doesn’t believe in security through cooperation. For Russia, security means the ability to control its neighbors. The logic is simple: "If we do not control the space around us, we are under threat". Accordingly, Russia needs "buffer zones" where Ukraine is a critical element, without which the Russian "fortress" becomes vulnerable.

Russian strategic culture rejects the liberal, rules-based world order. Russians see the world as an arena of struggle between several "poles", where small countries have no real sovereignty. This is effectively a return to the format of the "gendarme of Europe" of the first half of the 19th century and the Soviet sphere of influence of the second half of the 20th century.

This leads to the rejection of the Western concept of human rights, which the Kremlin brands as a "geopolitical weapon" designed to weaken the Russian state from within. The authors also devote considerable attention to war. They emphasize that in Russian culture, the threshold for using force is much lower than in the West. War is perceived as a normal function of state activity, rather than as a "last resort" (ultima ratio). This makes the Russian strategy flexible, but extremely dangerous for international stability.

Conspiracy theorists and technocrats

While Western analysts documented the external manifestations of Russian aggression, sociologist Konstantin Gaaze (an expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center and a lecturer at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, currently in emigration) examined the regime's internal transformation.

He noted how, after 2012, Russia transitioned to a model of an "emergency state", where the authorities and strategic culture privatized history and became hostage to the informal codes of Putin's inner circle. In his works, Gaaze argues that confrontation with the West became not just a choice for the Kremlin but a means of internal legitimization, in which insidiousness and a "siege mentality" serve as the foundation for the system's survival.

In his view, Russian strategic culture is an attempt to construct a "sovereign truth" that is independent of global liberal standards. This makes the conflict endless, as any compromise is perceived as a defeat in terms of identity.

Instead of stable laws or strategies, the system functions through "exceptions". According to Konstantin Gaaze, the war in Ukraine is not just geopolitics, but a way of legitimizing power by creating a constant existential threat. He describes Russia's strategy not as a plan, but as an endless series of "special operations" where the main goal is not to achieve a specific result, but to maintain control within Russia itself.

According to Konstantin Gaaze, Russia's strategy is not a plan, but an endless series of "special operations"

Konstantin Gaaze analyzes in detail the gap between two types of thinking in the Kremlin. He distinguishes between "gnostics" (security officials) and technocrats. "Gnostics" believe in secret conspiracies and hidden forces in world politics. Their strategic culture is paranoia turned into public service. Technocrats do not believe in Gnostic theories, but they ensure their implementation. According to Gazze, Russia's tragedy lies in the fact that these two groups have created a symbiosis in which the irrational goals of the security forces are achieved through the rational instruments of the technocrats.

In his opinion, Russian strategic culture is reactive. The Kremlin does not have a positive image of the future. Its strategy is a reaction to imaginary or real images from the past. This explains why Russia constantly "returns" (to 1945, to the 19th century, to Byzantium), but cannot offer a project for the future that is attractive to its neighbors.

Nuclear Orthodoxy

This internal analysis is made particularly acute by the concept developed by Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky, Professor at Reichman University in Israel. While Gaaze speaks of "sovereign truth", Adamsky, in his seminal work "Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy" (2019), describes the phenomenon of "Nuclear Orthodoxy" — a unique symbiosis of religious messianism and strategic deterrence.

According to Adamsky, Russian strategic culture after 2012 underwent a profound sacralization of war. The Russian Orthodox Church became not just a loyal institution, but part of the nuclear triad, sanctifying weapons of mass destruction as a guarantor of the preservation of "Orthodox civilization".

This adds a messianic dimension to Russia's strategy: war is perceived not simply as geopolitics, but as a crusade against the "decadent West". In such a coordinate system, any treachery becomes justified because it is done in the name of a "higher goal". Adamsky emphasizes that this theocratic-strategic synthesis makes the Russian elite psychologically resistant to sanctions and isolation, as it sees this as a "path of trials" for the chosen nation.

It is this messianic foundation that gives Professor Graeme Herd (Marshall Center) reason to focus on the Russian elite's "operating code". His analysis of how Putin's personal worldview and that of his entourage have been transformed into state strategy is an invaluable contribution to understanding Russian strategic culture.

In his seminal work "Understanding Russia’s Strategic Behavior: Imperial Strategic Culture and Putin’s Operational Code" (2022), Graeme Herd argues that we are dealing with an “imperial strategic culture” that finally crystallized after 2012. He highlights several critical aspects.

Informal governance. Herd explains that Russian strategy is not formed in official offices, but within informal clans (security forces, oligarchs, "old friends"). This gives rise to a special type of insidiousness: strategic decisions are made based on loyalty and "bro code" rather than national interests in the Western sense.

Paranoia about "foreign interference". Graeme Herd describes in detail the concept of "color revolutions" as the Kremlin's main fear. In this culture, any democratic change in a neighboring country is perceived as a "special operation by the West." This makes retaliatory dirty tricks (election interference, disinformation, hybrid warfare) morally justified as a "defensive reaction" in the eyes of the Russian elite.

Survival above all else. For Graeme Herd, Russian strategic culture is a culture of regime survival. It does not aim for stability or prosperity for the people. Its sole purpose is to preserve the power of a specific group. This is why negotiations with the Russians are so difficult: they see compromise not as a path to peace, but as a threat to their personal security.

Herd also introduces the important concept of "strategic flexibility". Since Russian culture is not bound by morality or law, it can instantly change vectors, violate any agreements, and use "meanness" as a legitimate tool of asymmetric war against the economically much stronger West.

While Eugene Rumer and Graeme Herd described the Kremlin's "operational code", Pavel Baev, a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), focuses on the degradation of strategic thinking among Russian generals. Pavel Baev points out that after 2012, the Russian army became hostage to "imperial revanchism". In his works, he describes a paradox: Russia created an army for short, victorious operations (such as in Crimea or Syria), believing in its own mythical "exceptionalism", but found itself completely unprepared for a large-scale war of attrition.

Baev emphasizes that in Russian strategic culture, nuclear weapons have ceased to be a deterrent and have become an instrument of diplomatic offensive. This is the same meanness elevated to the level of a global catastrophe: the use of nuclear rhetoric to cover up conventional aggression.

Ukrainian response

Here, Mykola Bielieskov, a leading Ukrainian military analyst, takes up the baton. His perspective is critically important because he deconstructs Russian strategic culture at the moment of its real clash with Ukrainian resistance. Bieleskov points out that Russian strategic culture is inherently hierarchical and inflexible. What Graeme Herd calls "bro code" and loyalty, Mykola Bielieskov turns into a concrete analysis of failures: lack of initiative on the ground, corruption, and inability to assess the enemy objectively.

He emphasizes that when Russia's "blitzkrieg" (flash warfare) failed, Russia's strategic culture instantly reverted to its archaic base — warfare of attrition, where the main resource is not technology, but the quantity of "cannon fodder" and iron. He illustrates how Ukrainian strategic culture (decentralized, adaptive, and horizontal) became an antidote to Russia's vertical and paranoid system.

I will conclude this analysis of the evolution of views with Oleksandr Lytvynenko's Ukrainian perspective. He was one of the first to note that for Russia, the war against Ukraine is not a tactical dispute over territory, but a strategic denial of Ukraine's very right to exist as a sovereign entity. In his research, he points out that Russian strategic culture is expansionist and anti-systemic, seeking not integration into the world order but its destruction.

Oleksandr Lytvynenko analyzed Russian methods of combining soft and hard power even before the term "hybrid warfare" became mainstream. He explained that, for the Kremlin, peace is only a phase in preparing for the next strike, and diplomacy is a means of disorienting the enemy. Lytvynenko's important contribution is the formation of Ukraine's response: since the Russian system is hierarchical and "gnostic", Ukraine must counter it with resilience and a networked social structure.

Ukraine must counter Russia with resilience and a networked social structure

The evolution of research thinking since 2012 shows that any illusions about the rationality or possibility of "fixing" the Russian regime through economic integration have finally been shattered. Russian strategic culture is a coherent, self-sufficient, and deeply irrational matrix for the West.

It rests on three pillars: a "state of emergency" as the norm of existence, messianic paranoia ("gnosticism") among the elites, and the denial of neighbors’ sovereignty. The transition from Medvedev's "hybrid games" to Putin's "sacred war" has proven that, in the Russian understanding, insidiousness is not an ethical flaw but a fundamental tool for strategic survival.

It is this transformation of strategic culture into a technology for manipulating reality that opens the way for us to analyze cognitive warfare in the next section.

Instruments of influence

While the first two parts of my essay were devoted to "archaeology" and "optics" — where Russian strategic culture came from and how the West finally began to see it — the third part is devoted to tools. We move from the question "Why are they doing this?" to the question "How exactly are they breaking our ability to think and resist?"

At the center of this analysis is the concept of cognitive warfare (2020). Unlike classic information warfare, which is waged over what we think, cognitive warfare targets how we think. As researcher Francois du Cluzel notes in his reports for NATO, the brain has become the "sixth theater of war". The aggressor's goal here is not to convince us of their truth, but to make us unable to distinguish truth from lies, paralyzing our very will to defend ourselves.

This technological breakthrough was made possible by combining three intellectual and digital pillars.

The theory of reflexive management and Vladimir Lefebvre's "Algebra of Conscience", which, back in the 1960s, gave insidiousness the status of a high mathematical discipline.

Linguistic diversion, or what Alexander Bogomolov calls "semantic looting", is a technique for capturing and distorting foreign meanings to destroy the enemy's identity.

Digital scaling is the transformation of Joseph Nye's liberal idea of soft power into aggressive sharp power, where AI algorithms and deepfakes automate the process of disorienting society.

The mathematics of deception: Vladimir Lefebvre's "Algebra of Conscience"

To understand the technology of Russian cognitive warfare, we must abandon the naive assumption that the same logic guides our opponent as it does us. A fundamental explanation for this discrepancy was offered by mathematician and psychologist Vladimir Lefebvre, whose work, "Algebra of Conscience" (1982), became the key to deciphering Soviet (and now Russian) strategic culture.

Lefebvre began developing his ideas in the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union. This made his concepts the foundation on which the special services of the USSR, and later Russia, built their operations for decades.

After emigrating from the USSR in 1974, he worked in the United States, where he published his major work, "Algebra of Conscience". In it, he attempted to explain to the American establishment why negotiations with the Kremlin often reached an impasse: because of a fundamentally different mathematical model of distinguishing between good and evil.

A paradox arose that determined the fate of modern hybrid warfare. In the West, Vladimir Lefebvre's ideas were largely dismissed as complex academic exoticism. In Russia, however, his theories were officially adopted by military science in the mid-1990s. In particular, Colonel S. Komov directly quoted Lefebvre in 1997, describing reflexive management as a key weapon in "information and psychological warfare".

The term "reflexive control" first appeared in Vladimir Lefebvre's work "Conflicting Structures" (1967). He described it as a process in which one of the parties to a conflict conveys to the other "the basis for a decision" that leads to a result favorable to the first party. This was the moment when psychology became part of mathematical game theory.

Vladimir Lefebvre was the first to view conflict not simply as a clash of forces, but as an interaction between two intellects, where each tries to simulate the thinking of the other. The point is that in games involving reflection, the winner is the one with the higher "reflection rank", that is, the one who can calculate not only the opponent's moves, but also how the opponent calculates his own moves.

In his most famous work, "Algebra of Conscience", Lefebvre compared two ethical systems that effectively explain the antagonism between contemporary strategic cultures.

The first ethical system (Western) perceives "compromise between good and evil is perceived as evil". It is a culture based on rules and clear moral imperatives.

The second ethical system (Soviet/Russian). In this system, a compromise between good and evil is perceived as good. Lefebvre mathematically proved that in this system, conflict is the basic state, and insidiousness and manipulation are considered legitimate tools for achieving goals.

For Vladimir Lefebvre, the target of attack is the enemy's "inner monitor" — their self-awareness. If you can change how a person sees themselves and their values, you gain complete control over their behavior.

The goal of this mathematically calculated trickery is to force the enemy to voluntarily make a decision that is beneficial to the aggressor but detrimental to the enemy itself. When we hear about the "fear of escalation" or the "need for compromise" in Western capitals, we see the successful result of reflexive control: the opponent acts within the limits of a foreign logic imposed on him, considering it his own.

Semantic looting: Alexander Bogomolov's linguistic weapon

If Vladimir Lefebvre provided us with a "blueprint" of Russian insidiousness, Alexander Bogomolov, director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies (NISS), describes the "language" in which this insidiousness speaks to the world. His concept of semantic looting is critical to understanding how cognitive warfare undermines the enemy's identity.

Without an attractive model for the future, Russia acts like a parasite on the body of Western civilization. Semantic looting is a technique for stealing key democratic concepts and filling them with the opposite meaning.

How does it work? The aggressor takes a term that has a positive meaning in the First ethical system (e.g., "sovereignty," "human rights," "anti-fascism," "peace") and uses it to cover up actions that are essentially the opposite.

As Alexander Bogomolov emphasizes, Russia uses its deep knowledge of the Western (and especially Ukrainian) context not for dialogue, but for sabotage. Knowing our sensitive points and values makes them vulnerable. When Russia talks about "protecting civilians", it creates a semantic shield for committing war crimes.

When words lose their stable meaning, the enemy loses the ability to describe reality

The ultimate goal of this process is not simply to spread disinformation, but to destroy the very possibility of understanding. When words lose their stable meaning, the enemy loses the ability to describe reality. A state arises, as Bogomolov defines it, when we try to defend ourselves with a language the enemy has largely occupied.

Combined with Vladimir Lefebvre's reflexive management, semantic looting creates a mirror maze effect. Western politicians, trying to find a compromise (which is a good thing in their system), fall into a trap where the very word "compromise" is just a way for Russians to lock in a tactical advantage before the next strike.

From "attractiveness" to "perforation": the breakdown of the concept of soft power

In 1990, when Joseph Nye introduced the concept of soft power, he assumed that international politics was an open market of ideas. Nye claimed that a state becomes stronger if it is attractive: if its culture, values, and policies inspire admiration, other countries will voluntarily follow its example.

However, Russian strategic culture (as we see it through the prism of Vladimir Lefebvre's "Algebra of Conscience") perceived this idea not as an invitation to fair competition, but as an instruction to search for weak spots.

In 2017, researchers Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig introduced the term sharp power to describe what soft power has become in the hands of authoritarian regimes. Unlike soft power, which seeks to attract, sharp power seeks to perforate the enemy's information environment.

According to Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, Russia does not seek to make its model attractive. Its goal is to exploit the openness of Western societies (media freedom, academic exchanges, NGOs) to inject toxic content. This is the practical embodiment of semantic looting: using the tools of democracy to destroy it.

Metaphorically, this can be called "information infection". If soft power is "light", then sharp power is a "virus". It uses "sticky power" (economic dependence) and the corruption of elites to create a situation in which the enemy becomes a hostage to their own interests and cannot resist.

Meanness as a strategy reaches its peak. It exploits the best aspects of democracies

In this context, meanness as a strategy reaches its peak. It exploits the best aspects of democracies — their tolerance, pluralism, and belief in dialogue — as entry points for destructive influence. As Alexander Bogomolov noted, the aggressor plays on the "sensitive strings" of Western liberalism, forcing it to doubt its own values and legitimacy.

The digital dictatorship of chaos: algorithmic reflexive control and "noise censorship"

The final stage in the evolution of Russian insidiousness took place at the intersection of the psychological technologies of the 1960s and the big data of the 2020s. In the digital space, cognitive warfare is no longer the domain of individual agents of influence but has become an automated process of hacking human consciousness.

According to Vladimir Lefebvre, reflective management required complex modeling of "enemy intelligence", but today social media algorithms do this automatically. Using AI, the aggressor identifies the cognitive vulnerabilities of entire social groups. Deepfakes are becoming the perfect tool for creating "false grounds": when you cannot believe your own eyes and ears, your ability to reflect rationally is shut down.

In a world dominated by sharp power, classic censorship (prohibition) is no longer necessary. As Peter Pomerantsev points out, Russia today uses a strategy of drowning out the truth with white noise. When a thousand conflicting interpretations are generated for a single real event, cognitive overload occurs. The goal is not to convince you of a lie, but to tire you out so much that you believe that "there is no truth".

Generative AI allows Alexander Bogomolov's semantic looting to be scaled up to industrial proportions. Now, ideologues are no longer needed to capture meanings— bot networks blur the meanings of words in real time, creating a state of constant informational disorientation.

In this digital storm, Russian strategic culture finds its ideal weapon. This is no longer just a war for territory, it is a war for the right to determine what is real. As Francois du Cluzel noted, in cognitive warfare, "the brain is a territory that cannot be fenced off with barbed wire". If the aggressor manages to hack into your "internal monitor," they win without firing a single shot.

Cognitive hacking technology is not just a collection of fakes

Cognitive hacking technology is not just a collection of fakes. It is a whole ecosystem where Vladimir Lefebvre's mathematics, Alexander Bogomolov's linguistics, and AI algorithms work in sync. This system uses our democratic openness as an access point for a virus of insidiousness, whose goal is to destroy the free world's ability to act together and defend its own values.

Concluding this part of the study, we must acknowledge that Russian strategic culture is not simply a set of outdated imperial ambitions. It is an effective, adaptive, and extremely cynical technology that has turned insidiousness into its main geopolitical asset.

Let's look at some examples of how this works.

A post by my Georgian colleague Gela Vasadze (Gela Vasadze): "In the morning, a friend sent me three short videos from 'Kazakh' channels, where people who look very much like Kazakhs talk about mass recruitment in Kazakhstan, about how the Ukrainian flag among Kazakhs is replacing the Kazakh flag, about the duplicity of Ankara, which, it turns out, is losing control, and even about 'Sorosites' as the shadow government of Kazakhstan. The scenario is primitive and therefore effective. First, fear: "You are being dragged into someone else's war". Then symbolic panic: "they have already taken your flag away". Then the destruction of trust in alternative centers of power: "Ankara will betray you." And the cherry on top — conspiracy theories about the shadow government—a classic of the late imperial genre. And the message is very clear: we will die together with Putin's empire, but we will not let the Nazi nationalists take over "our" country and create a modern nation state. I will not provide links or names — let's call them a legion. But, as they say, the caravan moves on...".

This is a perfect illustration of sharp power in its purest, most aggressive form. Here we see reflexive control — the Russians are not trying to convince the Kazakhs to love the "Russian world". They create false grounds for fear through a classic shift in the subject's reflection: forcing Kazakhstan to take a position of passive neutrality, which in fact only benefits Moscow, using the instinct for self-preservation as a lever of control.

The fact that Gela Vasadze writes "let's just call them a legion" and "I will not provide links" emphasizes the strategy of drowning the truth in noise: a huge number of short videos that hit on various triggers (Ankara, Soros, flags) create a sense of chaos. The goal is to induce cognitive fatigue among ordinary Kazakh citizens so they turn off their critical thinking.

In fact, this example shows that Russian strategic culture is an insidious export model. It works according to a single template in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Georgia, and strikes at one point—the destruction of national subjectivity. The thesis "we will not let nationalists create a modern state" is the empire's main fear.

This also applies to a host of Russian commentators known by the sarcastic name "good Russians". Take, for example, the posts of former Russian politician Alfred Koch. Even if he sincerely wishes Ukraine victory (which is entirely possible on a personal level), his activities can be seen as a case of intellectual soft power with specific side effects.

When a Russian liberal uses the slogan "Glory to Ukraine!", it can be both an act of solidarity and an act of appropriation. This creates the illusion of a shared semantic space, where Russian opposition opinion gains the right to "moderate" the Ukrainian agenda. A situation arises where Russians (even those in the opposition) begin to lecture Ukrainians on how to fight, reform, or build their state. This is a soft form of domination.

Koch often writes in a "biting truth" style, criticizing the Ukrainian leadership, the West, or the situation on the front lines. This can work as reflective management. He presents "reasons for decision-making" (pessimistic forecasts, disbelief in Western aid) that demoralize Ukrainian readers. As a result, the reader feels exhausted. Unlike direct Kremlin propaganda, which we cut off immediately, the words of "our own" (those who say "Glory to Ukraine") penetrate much deeper through the protective filters.

And finally, for Russian liberals, Alfred Koch is one of those who "save face" of their culture. Through such intellectuals, the West and part of Ukraine are presented with the idea that "it is possible to come to an agreement with the Russians; look how intelligent and pro-Ukrainian they are". This undermines the thesis of an existential gap between ethical systems (according to Vladimir Lefebvre). It creates a false hope that there is a subject within Russia capable of a different strategic culture, although in reality, it is just another wrapper for the same system.

An even more subtle and dangerous example of Western register hacking is happening right now at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo. It is the perfect stage to demonstrate how Russia uses sharp power tools to break through international isolation.

Russians actively use Western discourse on the inadmissibility of discrimination. They argue that the exclusion of athletes based on nationality is a "violation of human rights". This is classic semantic looting: a regime that violates the right to life of thousands of people every day uses liberal "rights" terminology to bring its "agents in sport uniform" back to the international arena. The goal is transparent and clear: to force the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Italian organizers to act according to the logic of the First Ethical System (where the rules of inclusivity are sacred), thereby destroying the political unity of the West.

The only adequate response to this threat cannot be "counter-propaganda" — it only adds to the "noise". The real antidote is a shift to a strategy of cognitive resilience, where concepts such as semantic hygiene, intellectual de-occupation, and systemic solidarity are important.

The first case involves restoring the original meanings of words. We must stop playing the enemy's "reflexive games" by using their terminology.

Intellectual de-occupation requires the realization that any dialogue with a representative of the Second Ethical System without a position of strength and clear red lines is merely a form of capitulation.

And finally, our solidarity must work toward the understanding that a cognitive attack on one person is an attack on the entire value system.

As Oleksandr Lytvynenko noted, victory in this war is possible only if the enemy realizes that it cannot achieve its goals. And this begins with our ability to see treachery at the moment it arises and refuse to be the object of reflexive control.

Schools and architects of insidiousness

The transition from models of cognitive influence to their practical implementation requires a clear systematization of the intellectual tools used by the aggressor. Russian strategic culture is not homogeneous. It functions as an ecosystem of complementary schools, each responsible for its own specific segment of meaning destruction. If cognitive warfare is a general strategy for breaking the enemy's will, then the schools listed below are its specific design bureaus: from fundamentalists who create religious justifications for genocide to methodologists who transform dehumanization into a management technology.

School of "civilizational fundamentalists"

The school of "civilizational fundamentalists" appears as a coherent intellectual and political network that integrates Alexander Dugin's ideological expansion and Konstantin Malofeev's financial resources with powerful instruments of influence: from the sacralization of imperial revanchism by Metropolitan Tikhon Shevkunov and the mystical aestheticization of militarism by Alexander Prokhanov to the aggressive media simplification of meanings by Mikhail Leontyev and the sophisticated export of ideas of Russian domination into the Western academic space through the diplomatic frontier of Natalia Narochitskaya.

A special place is occupied by Oleksii Arestovych, who can be described as "the Ukrainian mirror of Russian fundamentalism".

The school of "civilizationists" radicalized Vadim Tsimbursky's idea of Russia as a separate "geopolitical island", transforming it into the messianic concept of Katechon — a force that restrains the coming of the biblical Antichrist. According to this logic, Russia is not part of European civilization and, therefore, international law and universal morality do not apply to it. Any agreements with the West are considered only a temporary truce, which the island civilization has the right to violate at any moment for the sake of its own self-preservation.

By adapting Carl Schmitt's ideas about spheres of influence and the Manichean division of the world into "absolute good" (Russia) and "satanic anti-world" (the West), this school legitimized the removal of any moral restrictions. Treachery, deception, and murder against such an enemy are proclaimed not as sins, but as virtues.

That is why rhetoric about "desatanization" and denial of Ukraine’s sovereignty is not just propaganda, but deliberate intellectual preparation for genocidal practices, where Ukraine is perceived not as a subject, but only as a "territory of conflict".

Using the image of the "last bastion of traditional values", the group learned to hack the Western conservative spectrum by financing far-right parties through Konstantin Malofeev's structures. The insidiousness of this strategy lies in the use of values (family, church, hierarchy) as a tool to divide the West from within and undermine the unity of NATO and the EU. The Russian elite exploits these meanings as a technology of destabilization, turning traditionalism into a weapon in the cognitive warfare against the democratic world.

«Russian military strategists» (General Staff School)

For Valery Gerasimov's school, war is a continuous process, where "peace" is just a phase in which sensibilities are used instead of missiles, and the enemy's democratic institutions are turned into technological vulnerabilities. Through instruments of "asymmetric action", such as bot farms or election interference (US 2016, Brexit), the Russian Federation polarizes the enemy's society as much as possible.

A key element of the doctrine is "strategic deterrence by non-military means", which attacks the minds of Western leaders through nuclear blackmail and aggressive rhetoric. The goal of such a cognitive operation is to force the enemy to independently limit its assistance to Ukraine out of fear of "escalation".

Russian military strategists have officially established the dominant role of non-military methods over military ones in a ratio of 4 to 1, using protest movements, environmental and religious groups to create "controlled chaos". An example of the ideal implementation of this strategy was the occupation of Crimea in 2014, where the army merely recorded the result already achieved by a total cognitive breakdown of the management system and the consciousness of the population.

The transcript of the February 2014 meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine is documentary evidence of this breakdown: it demonstrates not so much a lack of military resources as the successful reflexive control of the Ukrainian leadership by Moscow. The enemy forced the Ukrainian elite to accept their own inability to resist, turning strategic indecision into an instrument of victory.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 became a moment of painful confrontation with reality for Russian strategic culture: Gerasimov's concept of a "hybrid blitzkrieg" failed miserably, as the calculation on the cognitive paralysis of the Ukrainian authorities and the groundwork for capitulation prepared by "non-military measures" were shattered by the network resistance of the entire society. The belief of Russian military strategists in their own propaganda about a "fake state" led to a strategic fiasco, forcing the Kremlin to resort to a primitive and bloody war of attrition reminiscent of the 20th century.

«Imperial realists» (Sergey Karaganov, Fyodor Lukyanov, Dmitry Trenin)

The school of "imperial realists", represented by key figures in the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (CFDP), Sergey Karaganov, Fyodor Lukyanov, and Dmitry Trenin, acts as the Kremlin's intellectual facade for Western elites. Having been integrated into global platforms (Davos, Valdai) for decades, they have become masters of semantic looting, offering the concept of "multipolarity" as a smokescreen for the right of great powers to ignore rules in their spheres of influence.

Using the term "democratization of international relations", they were actually promoting the idea of a "new Yalta" — a division of the world between several players, where the subjectivity of Ukraine and other smaller countries is completely denied.

By intellectually hacking Western realism (Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer), these strategists legitimize Russian aggression as a "natural reaction" of a great power to the expansion of its competitors, convincing the world that war is not a crime but a "tragic geopolitical necessity".

Sergey Karaganov's radicalization of the deterrence theory plays a special role here, as he turned it into an instrument of reflexive governance through terror. His calls for a preemptive nuclear strike on Europe are a calculated cognitive operation designed to break the will of Western politicians through fear of the end of the world and force them to capitulate for the sake of "salvation".

Dmitry Trenin and Fyodor Lukyanov are responsible for Russia's strategic disengagement from Europe and its reorientation towards the so-called global majority of the Global South. Within this school, Ukraine is merely labeled a tool of the West, subject to disposal.

Their intellectual evolution is telling: at the beginning of their careers, Trenin and Lukyanov acted as the main mediators between Russia and the global intellectual world.

Dmitry Trenin, a former military intelligence colonel, headed the Carnegie Moscow Center for decades, with a reputation as the most balanced and "Western-oriented" analyst, whose reports were perceived in Washington as the voice of reason.

As editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs (modeled on the American magazine Foreign Affairs), Fyodor Lukyanov built bridges with European elites, positioning Russia as an integral part of Greater Europe.

However, today, under the guise of "cold analytics", Trenin acts as a strategic surgeon who proves the need for a harsh "operation" on Ukraine for the sake of the health of the Eurasian space. In contrast, Lukyanov acts as an anesthesiologist for the Western elites.

He legitimizes violence through the category of "historical inevitability", convincing the world that the destruction of the former world order is not a crime, but a natural return to the normal state of struggle between great powers, where ethics gives way to cynical pragmatism.

Together, they cloak imperial revanchism in terms of "civilizational sovereignty" and "global majority". Their activities within the Valdai Discussion Club and SWAP have transformed classical political realism into an instrument of intellectual service to aggression. Using their authority in international circles, they make insidiousness rational and war an acceptable means of resolving geopolitical conflicts, turning academic debate into a front in the cognitive warfare against international law.

The ultimate goal of the "imperial realists" is to create an alternative reality where Russia is not seen as an aggressor and outcast, but as the "center of gravity" of a new world order. They are forming mechanisms of "sticky power" (through corrupt elites, energy dependence, and joint projects with BRICS countries) that are intended to paralyze the ability of international institutions to punish Moscow for violations of the law. This intellectual cover is intended to make the crime rational and nuclear blackmail an acceptable tool for enforcing peace on Russia's terms.

Special services (the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) played a special role in structuring this insidiousness. Through a network of "historical clubs" (the Russian Historical Society, headed by Sergey Naryshkin, and the Russian Military Historical Society, headed by Vladimir Medinsky), they turned history into an operational activity. These are the headquarters of cognitive aggression, where academic science is replaced by "operational history"— a tool for destabilizing the enemy and legitimizing territorial claims. This is where intelligence technologies are finally fused with ideological hallucinations, where analysts like Dmitry Trenin become operators of active measures in the global intellectual space.

Methodologists of systemic dehumanization

The school of "methodologists", headed by Sergey Kiriyenko, is the most cynical wing of Russian strategic culture, which has turned the intellectual legacy of Georgy Shchedrovitsky into an instrument of total social engineering. In this system, the world is perceived as a set of systems and processes where humans are deprived of subjectivity and defined only as an "anthropological resource" or material for configuration. As Alexander Litvinenko aptly put it, they are "Marxists on low-key". Using organizational-activity games (OAG) as a method of "reprogramming" the elites, the methodologists taught the Russian leadership to perceive politics and war as a playing field where conscience is a superfluous element that only hinders systemic efficiency.

They laid the foundation for a "corporate state" that manipulates meanings to maintain dominance and export instability. The terrible "apogee" of this school is Timofey Sergeytsev, whose programmatic texts (March 2022) on the "denazification" of Ukraine became instructions for cognitive genocide. He turned abstract methodological games into a practical technology for erasing national identity through violence, becoming a direct bridge between Vladimir Lefebvre's "algebra" and the basements of Bucha.

Methodologists have become "architects" of internal cognitive warfare, turning Russia into an experimental laboratory where artificial reality is constructed through the media and digital dictatorship. This is the pure embodiment of Lefebvre's Second Ethical System, where the dehumanization of governance becomes a virtue, and the ability to create a world where "white is black" is considered the highest professional skill.

Vladislav Surkov plays the role of an "independent radical" and postmodern director of chaos in this structure, who does not belong to any school directly, because he himself was the instrument that stitched their ideas into a single cognitive field. He turned "Algebra of Conscience" by Vladimir Lefebvre into a political performance, where ideology is just a design product for manipulation.

Surkov became the "father" of "non-linear warfare", where the line between truth and imitation is completely blurred, and insidiousness is packaged in the sophisticated literary form of "the loneliness of the half-breed", making cynicism attractive to the intellectual elite.

Instead, Vladimir Medinsky acts as the chief technological operator of "historical hallucinations" and memory engineer. His function is to translate the mystical dogmas of fundamentalists into the language of school textbooks and mass myths, legitimizing lies as a state virtue.

Medinsky not only studies the past, but he also constructs it, creating "positive myths" that justify any betrayal or aggression in the interests of the empire. This is an ideal mechanism for "reprogramming" generations, where history becomes a weapon, and artificial dogmas replace the people's capacity for reflection.

An example of this is Vladimir Putin's article "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" (July 2021), which became the first total rallying point for all strategic schools in the Russian Federation, turning "insidiousness as a theory" into mandatory preparation for murder. It was the product of a collective "design bureau" where each school performed its function.

Sergey Kiriyenko's methodologists created the technological framework of the text, using social engineering tools to prove the absurd thesis that "true sovereignty for Ukraine is only possible in partnership with Russia". At the same time, Medinsky provided factual content, transforming a thousand years of history into a set of "positive myths" that deny Ukraine's right to exist outside the empire.

Dugin’s and Shevkunov’s "civilizationists" introduced a metaphysical narrative into the discourse, portraying Ukraine as an artificial "anti-Russia" project created by the Western "satanic anti-world" to destroy the Katechon, while the "realist imperialists" (Dmitry Trenin, Fyodor Lukyanov) prepared diplomatic packaging ("anesthesia"), conveying the "red lines" to the West through an article and justifying future aggression as a "geopolitical inevitability".

This publication, in turn, was a large-scale cognitive operation by military and special services technologists (active measures) aimed at reflexive control of Ukrainian society and the army. The goal was to sow doubt and paralyze the will to resist by presenting the coming war as a "return to natural unity". The 2021 article became a dress rehearsal for a cognitive blitzkrieg, where the intellectual insidiousness of all these ideological schools ultimately fused with the military machinery of the General Staff.

Conclusions: breaking points of the system

The strength of Russia's strategic structure is an illusion created by cognitive warfare techniques, but its foundation has critical cracks caused by the very nature of its strategic culture. The main vulnerability of the "methodologists" is their attitude toward people as soulless functions or schemes. Their social engineering has proven powerless against irrational will, dignity, and the ability to self-organize. The structure inevitably breaks down when people refuse to act as "cogs" and reality does not fit into the prescribed scenarios of organizational strategic games.

A system built on total lies and manipulation by the enemy inevitably becomes a victim of its own reflexive control, starting to lie to itself. The system in the Russian Federation is poisoned by its own insidiousness: subordinates feed their leaders with manipulative reports, causing the Kremlin to become a hostage to a distorted reality.

This strategic blindness leads to the degradation of feedback and a loss of touch with reality, as internal communication channels are clogged with the very product of cognitive attacks that was intended for export to the West.

Within the Russian strategic machine, there is a tectonic rift between technocratic methodologists who seek to build an effective corporation and fanatical "civilizationists" who dream of a bloody apocalypse. As long as resources are sufficient, these groups coexist, but their depletion will inevitably lead to internal destabilization when cold technocratic cynicism clashes with religious fundamentalism. This state schizophrenia makes the apparatus increasingly unstable, as the attempt to combine cold calculation with a fanatical desire for destruction deprives the system of a single vector of development.

Finally, the weakness of semantic looting lies in the fact that Russia, parasitizing on stolen Western meanings, has failed to create a single viable image of its own future. Russian weapons lose their power as soon as Ukraine and the West carry out semantic disinfection, clearly calling things by their proper names and destroying cognitive noise. Beyond the destruction and denial of the sovereignty of others, the Russian project turns out to be empty. As soon as the manipulative veil falls, it becomes clear that behind the imperial flag, there is nothing but a call for chaos and the absence of any attractive alternative for the world.

Desinformation eng geopolitics russia strategy war