What Scares Russia's Generals The Most?

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) and newly-appointed Army Chief of Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov in the Kremlin in Moscow, on November 9, 2012

Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg: What Scares Russia's Generals the Most? Russians

It’s not the U.S., even if Moscow’s chief military strategist thinks the Pentagon’s goal is regime change.

Russian and U.S. generals have made no secret lately of the fact that they each view other as their No. 1 adversary.

Modern weaponry plays a big role in these mutual threats. But Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov is now fretting that the U.S. will deploy a “Trojan horse” strategy of fostering a fifth column within Russia and its allies. That the general should be looking so publicly over his shoulder at his own people should trouble citizens.

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WNU Editor: From the Kremlin perspective, there has been nothing but regime change in eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. So why not Russia? Coupled with the Kremlin position that it is the West that is responsible for all of this change in Eastern Europe, including former states of the Soviet Union breaking away from Moscow, the fear of history repeating itself but this time within Russia is very real. I personally find this view point among many of my generation (I am in my late 50s) very frustrating, and definitely short-sighted. But there is hope for the future. Russia's younger generations do not have this viewpoint, and they certainly do not have the fear that permeates from the Kremlin that they may lose power. Fortunately. For the moment this type of discussion and speculation is moot. The country is enjoying full employment and Russians feel that their lives are improving, and because of the economic situation there is no real opposition to Putin. But if a time should arrive where opposition grows and calls for change get loud, and the Kremlin adopts the view that "we have met the enemy and it is us", while blaming the West for it, the end result is not going to be pretty for Russia.