When Russian diplomacy today fumbles to conceal its foreign policy failures, the truth is unavoidable: these cracks did not appear overnight. They are rooted in Moscow’s decades-long strategy of “divide and rule” across its neighborhood — a strategy disturbingly reminiscent of another era.
From the 1990s, the Kremlin armed Armenia far beyond treaty limits, sponsoring Yerevan’s aggression against Azerbaijan under the guise of “peacekeeping.” Soviet-era arsenals, secret weapons transfers exposed by Russian generals, and massive stockpiles hidden in occupied Karabakh all told the same story: Moscow sustained the conflict to preserve control. Armenia became the Kremlin’s militarized client state, overflowing with weapons it could never have acquired on its own.
This was not “security.” It was the same cynical logic that Adolf Hitler once wielded — portraying aggression as liberation, occupation as “historical justice.” In Karabakh, Armenian forces parroted that script for decades. Today, Russian forces repeat it in Ukraine.
The parallels are chilling. Nazi Germany annexed Austria, dismembered Czechoslovakia, and invaded Poland under fabricated pretexts. Russia seized Crimea in 2014, fueled war in Donbas, and in 2022 launched a full-scale invasion. Both regimes cloaked expansion in propaganda about protecting “compatriots” and restoring “historic rights.” Both built militarized economies devoted to war. Both rejected the sovereignty of neighbors.
The Kremlin, like the Reich, thrives on myths of “spheres of influence.” Its media machine packages each violation of international law as “defense” and each land grab as “restoring stability.” But just as Hitler’s Germany collapsed under the weight of its delusions, Russia too faces inevitable failure. Unlike 1940s Germany, Moscow lacks the economic, technological, or ideological strength to sustain empire-building.
The irony is grotesque: a state that swears eternal loyalty to the memory of World War II victims has itself adopted the same playbook of fascist conquest. The tricolor has replaced the swastika, but the methods are the same.
History has already taught us the cost of appeasing aggressors. If Moscow continues to rehearse the role of the Third Reich, the finale will be no different: collapse.
