As I have confessed, Putin fooled me as he has fooled and still fools many conservatives. The key aspect about Putin is that you cannot trust a word that comes out of his mouth. Everything he says is to manipulate the audience he is addressing. He controls the Russian population by strictly supervising the media, telling the Russian people a pack of lies, blocking foreign media, and jailing or killing those defying his dictates.

For the Western audience, he has a stock of conservative ideas to shower on them. He focuses on the Christian groups with sentiments about family, religion, and history. Indeed, I once thought he was essentially a Burkean conservative because of his valuing Russian history and its lessons. An appalling mistake that now embarrasses me.

In reality, Putin is a vicious murdering type of Russian Czar who is fixated on rebuilding the Russian empire. Nothing stands in his way. He is in a constant state of recalculating what he says to suit the time, place and audience. That’s the reason he so often contradicts himself – seemingly contradicts himself. He stays unerringly on the line.

If the West does not prepare itself, it might find Putin and his army in its backyard. The interview below with General Richard Shirreff shows just what’s at stake. Shirreff talks about rebuilding the army of the NATO countries. What he does not talk about are the emasculating ideologies that are weakening the West. These ideologies have to be eliminated. The reality is that men fight wars.