Back in 2010 when world football governing body FIFA awarded Russia the right to host this year’s World Cup finals, few viewed Moscow as a threat. At the time, President Dmitry Medvedev seemed eager to portray himself as a Western-friendly reformer. In the diplomatic arena, the reset with the Obama White House had yet to unravel and it would be a further two years before US presidential candidate Mitt Romney would face ridicule for daring to call Russia America’s number one geopolitical foe. The 2007 cyber-attack on Estonia and the 2008 war in Georgia had certainly set some alarm bells ringing, but most still regarded talk of a new Cold War as absurd.



That is emphatically no longer the case. Few would doubt that Russia and the Western world are engaged in the most intense geopolitical struggle since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps even more remarkably, Russia appears to be winning. For the past four years, Western leaders have repeatedly found themselves outmaneuvered by the sheer audacity of the Kremlin. Russia has managed to retain the initiative as it has invaded Ukraine, thrown its weight behind Assad in Syria, wrought havoc in cyberspace, and revolutionized our understanding of information warfare. No election is complete without an investigation into Russian meddling, while Kremlin trolls have become so ubiquitous that numerous websites have chosen to remove their comment sections altogether.

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