Thousands of soldiers. Columns of tanks. And Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, looked on yesterday as the military parade commemorated the USSR's victory over Nazi Germany.

In a week's time, the country will vote on giving Putin, a former KGB spy, the opportunity to stay in the KremlinA central fortress in a city, used to refer to a complex in Moscow with five palaces and four cathedrals. The Russian government is run from within this citadel. until 2036. He has been in power almost continuously since 1999.

During that time, Russia has asserted itself as a dominant player on the global stage, invading and taking over parts of neighbouring Georgia and Ukraine. It has also come to the defence of brutal anti-democratic figures in Syria and Libya.

And, now, German spy agencies have warned that Russian experts are training extremist neo-Nazis in terrorist techniques. They say participants were trained in a special camp near the Russian city of St Petersburg in using weapons and explosives, as well as for close military combat.

In recent years, Moscow has threatened military retaliationCounter-attack. if Sweden or Finland joins NatoThe North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was founded in 1949 to unite Western democracies in Europe and North America against the perceived growing threat of the USSR. It now has 31 members.. Russia has also simulated nuclear attacks against Sweden and tried to carry out an assassination using deadly poison in SalisburyCathedral city in Southern England. In 2018, a former Russian double agent who lived there, Sergei Skripal, was the subject of an assassination attempt..

Experts say that instead of confronting its enemies directly, Russia focuses on being able to "disrupt and destabiliseUpset the stability of (a region or system); cause unrest or instability in.", encouraging violence and political disorder from within.

Such Cold War-like tactics echo the early part of Putin's career. A new book claims that, as a young spyPolitico Magazine says that when Vladimir Putin first arrived in Dresden as a mid-level KGB officer in 1985, he was in charge of handling anti-Western terrorists., he was in charge of running both left-wing terror groups and prominent neo-Nazis.

Russia has also been successfully using digital weapons to undermine the West. Democrats in the US have long obsessed over Russia's involvement in getting Trump elected through the use of disinformation and fake news.

But years of breaking the law have led to Russia becoming isolated from the international community and weighed down by economic sanctionsEconomic measures designed to punish a country, for instance by excluding it from trade..

The impression of a strong leader willing to take on the world keeps Putin popular at home. As the former president of Georgia puts it, "Whenever Putin's domestic popularity dips, he either escalatesMake or become more intense or serious. an ongoing conflict or launches a new offensive."

No. Putin needs to keep up the aggression in order to keep his power base. Making speeches about "NATO encirclement" and "Russophobia" drums up nationalist support, but it doesn't change the fact that Russia isn't even in the world's top 10 richest countries. Being able to invade and bomb other countries might look powerful, but it poses no real threat to established democracies.

Yes. It isn't all about money and elections. Yesterday's grandioseImpressive and imposing in appearance or style, especially pretentiously so. military parade hinted at Putin's more
imperial ambitions. A modern-age tsarTitle given to an emperor of Russia before the revolution of 1917. The word was originally used for the Bulgarian monarchs in the 10th Century, but can also be used to refer to anyone with absolute power., he wants to reassert Russia as a global power and achieve its centuries-old dream of reaching "warm waters". While Crimea is a good start, the Balkans, with its access to the Mediterranean, might be a future goal. Former allies of the USSR, some inside the EU, lie in between.