"We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states," states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. "It's important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia's opponents."

The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post.

Using much tougher and blunter language than the public foreign policy document, the secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, claims that the United States is leading a coalition of "unfriendly countries" aimed at weakening Russia because Moscow is "a threat to Western global hegemony." The document says the outcome of Russia's war in Ukraine will "to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order," a clear indication that Moscow sees the result of its invasion as inextricably bound with its ability - and that of other authoritarian nations - to impose its will globally.

One proposal submitted in February 2023 to the Foreign Ministry by the deputy head of Moscow's Institute for the Commonwealth of Independent States, which maintains close ties to Russia's security apparatus, laid out Russia's options more bluntly still.

The academic, Vladimir Zharikhin, called for Russia to "continue to facilitate the coming to power of isolationist right-wing forces in America," "enable the destabilization of Latin American countries and the rise to power of extremist forces on the far left and far right there," as well as facilitate "the restoration of European countries' sovereignty by supporting parties dissatisfied with economic pressure from the U.S."

Other points in the policy proposal, which was also provided to The Post, suggested that Moscow stoke conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan to bring Russia and China closer together, as well as "to escalate the situation in the Middle East around Israel, Iran and Syria to distract the U.S. with the problems of this region."

And for those asking why our support of Ukraine is so important when our countries are geographically so far apart, isn't the answer now rather obvious?

For Mikhail Khodorkovsky - the longtime Putin critic who was once Russia's richest man until a clash with the Kremlin landed him 10 years in prison - it is not surprising that Russia is seeking to do everything it can to undermine the United States. "For Putin, it is absolutely natural that he should try to create the maximum number of problems for the U.S.," he said. "The task is to take the U.S. out of the game, and then destroy NATO. This doesn't mean dissolving it, but to create the feeling among people that NATO isn't defending them."

"The Americans consider that insofar as they are not directly participating in the war [in Ukraine], then any loss is not their loss," Khodorkovsky said. "This is an absolute misunderstanding."

A defeat for Ukraine, he said, "means that many will stop fearing challenging the U.S." and the costs for the United States will only increase.

the Don't Doctrine just isn't working.

Did you bother to actually READ the statements you're commenting on? They're not about Biden whatsoever. They're about the fact that if Putin isn't deterred in Ukraine, then he'll launch attacks on other countries - likely NATO members too - and/or other anti-America countries won't fear US reprisals should they attack other nations in their spheres of influence such as China trying to retake Taiwan.

This is more about what happens AFTER a nation ignores any admonition by the US to NOT act. It's showing them why they shouldn't have acted in the first place by making the cost of their hubris unsustainable.

The problem today in the US is Putin Republicans stopping Congress from following up on the very means to defeat such threats once they manifest themselves.