Russia have long struggled with the existential threat offered by NATO and the US empire.

Yes, they have opposed US imperialism…but for reasons of national survival not ideology. They have stood up against US militarism and US hegemony, not “globalism”.

In fact in the early 2000s Putin strove repeatedly to have Russia accepted into the Western collective, lobbying to join NATO and for “close integration” with the EU.

It was only western intransigence – and NATO’s need for an “enemy” to justify its existence – that forced Russia, reluctantly, into its current stance.

People have recently started assuming Russia must be anti-globalist because it has been forced into being ‘anti-imperialist’. But this is a conflation of two different concepts.