Russia has been described as a newly emerging democracy, and its current President Vladamir Putin has been duly elected with massive majorities since 2004: Electoral history of Vladimir Putin - Wikipedia
Vladamir Putin has stood as an independent candidate against political parties and this is what the Russian people have decided that their electoral system should be based on whether or not the electoral process is State-controlled or not. In this respect all electoral systems bar a few have State-controls be that explicit or implicit.
Vladamir Putin's invasion into Ukraine is described by him as a special military operation and not a war against Ukraine. Only time will tell how the Russian electorate will look upon this adventure. It is clear to me that since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian government did not recognise the democratic wishes of the people of Crimea who wished to be part of Russia. The government of Ukraine strengthened itself against the separatists in Luhansk and Donietsk and became a threat to Russia especially when it it explicitly declared to the world that this Ukrainian government wished to be part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and so a real threat to the status quo that settled down since the unravelling of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. So Ukraine provoked the conflict with Russia and with its continuing urging of the western powers to support it with military weapons and a no fly zone over Ukraine it is fuelling the conflict into a major war that threatens to turn into a very dangerous world war with no holds barred as we see from the sanctions against Russia and its overseas oligarchs.
What would Vladamir Putin and the Kremlin settle for. It depends on what happens on the ground and in the countries international relations. So far, the relentless bombing and occupation of strategic lands adjoining Crimea and its borders seem to indicate that it has something clear cut in terms of creating a buffer state on its eastern borders with Ukraine and in the northern territories against Belarus. And it wishes to reduce the military capacity of Ukraine to set it back decades to force the western countries to come to Ukrainian assistance with refugee resettlement schemes and humanitarian and military support. Russia has the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and so long as the Russian population continue to back their elected President, Russia will attain its objective on a neighbouring State.
This brings us to the question of the old idea of non-alignment in foreign policies as a movement, the independence that it entails and so the its desirable effects on trade and peace. In inherited geopolitics conflicts arise because of historical associations and associated propaganda from both sides to the conflict as the vested interests as States. Ukraine is a modern day example of this and so was the Iraq adventure for the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Countries get dependent on foreign aid and States with advanced military equipment that they need a market for perpetrate divisions between neighbours as we see in Yemen and in the suffering of its people. Afghanistan has been no exception. States use the refugee generation as a weapon of warfare to cripple the economies of their adversaries as these cause problems in severe problems of accommodation in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and other rich nations who have to fund the lives of the refugees.
Nationalism is only to be considered reasonable within a context of Non-alignment so that countries can trade with any nation and live in peace with their neighbours.
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