Russia's new National Strategy regards not just foreign countries as a threat, but the very processes reshaping the modern world, argues Mark Galeotti for the Moscow Times. It bears the fingerprints of the hawkish National Security Adviser Nikolai Patrushev. Again, the West is the enemy who tries to destroy Russia from within. But the Strategy is more: it is a quest against modernity.

A regime that for twenty years sought to be an exemplar of ‘hybrid authoritarianism,’ seems to be seeking to get back to basics. Belarus, Navalny, the persecution of his anti-corruption organisation FBK and independent media have made Putin change his mind. It is not (yet) totalitarianism, but it is definitely a watershed.