Part 4: The Strategy Was Hiding in Plain Sight

Part 4 of the series Faith, Power, and the War in Ukraine. Start at the beginning →

Before I tell you what I think it means, I want to show you what happened.

In my previous post, I asked: Do you have eyes to see? Now I want you to look at the pattern.

My argument is behavioral. It flows from what Russian political and Church leaders said, what Russia rebuilt, and what it did as its power recovered. The strategy I see was hiding in plain sight: public ambitions were repeatedly discounted while assurances of cooperation were taken at face value.

Consider the sequence.

Ambition During Russia’s Weakness

In the early 1990s, Russia faced economic contraction, deteriorating armed forces and unstable institutions. The 1998 financial crisis exposed the state’s weakness. It remained a nuclear power, but its capacity to project conventional military and economic power was sharply constrained (sources 4 and 5).

Yet arguments for preserving the former Soviet space as a common whole were already public. On 17 January 1992, Metropolitan Kirill addressed army and navy officers at the Kremlin. He acknowledged the new sovereign states but urged them to exercise voluntary restraint in their sovereignty, especially in building separate armed forces. He argued that borders could not sever their peoples’ longstanding community. He explicitly presented this restraint as voluntary and free of external pressure (source 53; translation and paraphrase from Russian).

In 1993, Kirill helped initiate the World Russian People’s Council, creating a continuing public forum for discussion of Russian identity, statehood and communities beyond Russia’s borders (source 54). These early statements provide the language of a common historical space that preceded Putin’s presidency.

Then the direction began to change.

Rebuilding Russian Power

As Putin rose to power in 1999–2000, the Russian economy began recovering. Oil and gas revenues increased. Government finances improved. Foreign reserves grew. Moscow began rebuilding the military and restoring the capacity of the Russian state.

Putin spoke about restoring order, strengthening the state and recovering Russia’s strategic position. His 2000 address warned against strategic defeat.

He had set out part of his thinking even earlier. In a 1999 article published under his name, Putin wrote that the state “has the right to regulate” the development and use of Russia’s natural resources, and that without state support and large national corporations Russia could not “compete on equal terms with Western transnational corporations.”

Putin also drew on the military and security services. Kryshtanovskaya and White’s research, as summarized in source 39, reported that about a quarter of a selected political elite sample had military education in 2002, compared with 6.7 percent in 1993; the Security Council figure was 58.3 percent. In 2003, Kryshtanovskaya estimated that about 60 percent of Putin’s inner circle came from military or security backgrounds (source 40). While estimates vary depending on the authors, they all agree about the growing influence of the siloviki (Russian military, security, intelligence, and law-enforcement personnel).

At almost the same time, Putin presented Russia as open to cooperation with the West. In his 5 March 2000 interview on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Breakfast with Frost, hosted by David Frost, he did not rule out possible membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if Russia were treated as an equal partner. The same interview expressed opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion. Two years later, NATO and Russia created the NATO–Russia Council to work as equal partners in areas of common interest.

Russia was still rebuilding. It was not yet capable of challenging the Western system directly on anything approaching equal military or economic terms. Accommodation, partnership, and demands for recognition as an equal characterized much of Russia's public posture during this period.

Europe’s Dependence and Russia’s Rearmament

Meanwhile, much of Western Europe was taking advantage of the post-Cold War peace dividend. Defense efforts declined, commercial ties with Russia deepened, and Europe became increasingly dependent on Russian energy. The arrangement appeared mutually beneficial: Europe received energy; Russia received revenue. Increasingly, Russia also received leverage.

Russia’s economy strengthened. State finances improved. Military spending recovered from its post-Soviet collapse. Energy exports generated enormous income. Political authority became increasingly centralized. The security services regained influence. The Russian military was modernized.

Figure 1. Military spending by Russia and European NATO members, 1992–2025, in constant 2024 US dollars. The European group is fixed at the fourteen countries that were NATO members in 1992.

Russia’s military rebuilding is measurable. The first chart shows military spending in constant dollars. The second shows how that spending changed from each group’s 1992 starting point. Together, they show the scale of Russia’s recovery and expansion.

Figure 2. Real spending growth since 1992. Each series starts at 100 and shows relative expenditure for Russia and European NATO members.

Absolute dollars of expenditures do not tell the whole story. Considering Russia’s production costs (labor and material), sources estimate Europe’s 2024 spending advantage at about 1.6 to one, compared with more than three to one at market exchange rates. Based upon that estimate, Russia has roughly twice the relative purchasing power per market-rate dollar. Figure 3 uses a broader European comparison group than the fixed 1992 NATO group in Figures 1–2.

Figure 3. What a defense dollar buys: 2024 military spending by Russia and Europe, at market exchange rates and adjusted for local prices (purchasing power).

As Russian Capability Increased

Then watch what happened as Russian capability increased. In 2005, Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union a major geopolitical catastrophe. In 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, he attacked the post-Cold War unipolar order and condemned NATO expansion. In 2008, Russia went to war with Georgia. In 2014, Russia seized Crimea.

Crimea is particularly revealing. Putin initially denied that the armed men occupying strategic sites were Russian soldiers and described them as local self-defense forces. He later acknowledged that Russian servicemen had stood behind them (sources 19, 20, and 49). Russia annexed Crimea. In 2021, Putin argued that Russians and Ukrainians were historically “one people” (source 21). In the weeks before February 2022, Russian officials repeatedly denied plans to invade Ukraine. Russia invaded anyway (sources 31, 32, and 33).

Western sanctions and military reassurance measures did not reverse the annexation. And despite Russian actions, significant commercial ties continued, and in September 2015 Gazprom and five European energy companies signed an agreement on Nord Stream 2 (sources 11 and 55). The West’s response failed to deter further aggression. In fact, the West’s continued cooperation with Russia showed that the West would continue to do business with Russia and it gave Russia increasing revenues, room to rebuild, and license to continue its aggressive behavior.

In Post 2, I examined the commitments Russia made to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders, and how Russia violated them. Here, the question is how Russia rebuilt the power to impose its will.

Deception as a Strategy

I compare the strategy Russia followed after the fall of the Soviet Union to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the ancient Chinese treatise on war strategy written about 2,500 years ago. Sun Tzu’s treatise includes a blunt principle: “All warfare is based on deception.” He taught that “when able to attack, we must seem unable,” and “if he [the enemy] is in superior strength, evade him.” The good fighters of old first made themselves secure and then “waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy” (source 41). The analogy is clear: agree to terms while weak, buy time and rebuild, then act more aggressively as power grows. This is exactly what Putin did. Another Chinese classic of strategy, The Thirty-Six Stratagems, offers a related maxim: “Hide a knife behind a smile” (source 42). The comparison comes from Russia’s public conduct: cooperate while constrained, rebuild strength, exploit dependence and division, then use force to restore Russian dominance. There is a deliberate strategic progression.

The Russian military doctrine of maskirovka is also built on deception. It uses concealment, camouflage and disinformation to mislead an opponent. A later account quotes Soviet military strategist Vasilii Reznichenko’s 1966 definition, including “concealing true targets and installing simulated ones” (source 49). Crimea, as described above, illustrates its application. Soviet theorists also developed the concept of “reflexive control,” which shapes the assumptions on which an opponent makes decisions (source 50). These concepts help explain how public ambitions can coexist with misleading assurances. Russia’s disregard of signed agreements shows its willingness to break almost any agreement once it no longer serves its purposes.

Judge my interpretation against what Russia said and did.

Weakness → Cooperation while rebuilding → Greater economic and military power → Leverage over Europe → More aggressive demands → Force to restore Russian dominance.

Russia’s ambitions did not have to remain secret for deception to work. Leaders could speak publicly of historical unity while offering assurances that encouraged others to discount the political consequences. As Russia rebuilt its power, its demands became more confrontational and its use of force more extensive. Figure 4 shows how the language hardened as military spending rose.

Figure 4. Russia’s military spending, 1992–2024, constant 2024 US dollars, with key statements and actions marked. Spending fell to about $16 billion in 1998 and reached about $149 billion in 2024, roughly nine times higher.

The Expansion of Russia’s Armed Forces

The size of the armed forces followed a different path from spending. Early reforms reduced personnel while providing better pay, equipment and readiness. Since the full-scale invasion, Putin has increased the authorized service-member ceiling seven times, reaching 1,550,500 in September 2026. These are positions authorized by decree, not a count of personnel serving (sources 43 and 44).

Figure 5. Russia’s military personnel, 1992–2026. Gray shows authorized ceilings set by decree; blue shows independent estimates of the troops actually serving. Russia does not publish its actual headcount. Excludes the National Guard and other security services.

Power is more than money

That is where the partnership between Putin’s state and Kirill’s Church institutions becomes strategically important. The connection reaches back beyond the current war. Kirill’s 1992 appeal for restraint in the sovereignty of the new states was framed in shared history and security. By 2024, the World Russian People’s Council, meeting under his chairmanship, adopted a program addressed to Russia’s legislative and executive authorities that called the war a “Holy War” (sources 30 and 53).

¹ “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. ² They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. ³ And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.”
John 16:1–3 (ESV)^[S1]

Calling aggression a “holy war” does not make it holy, nor does it make it just.

The same 2024 document demanded that all of modern Ukraine enter Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence. It called for Russia to lead integration throughout the entire post-Soviet space and made the reunification of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians a foreign-policy priority (source 30, sections 1–3). This is explicit public evidence of geopolitical ambition expressed in religious and civilizational language.

Coercion compels obedience. Sacred meaning can help sustain it.

The state supplies law, coercive power, mobilization, media reach, and military force. Church institutions supply sacred history, moral vocabulary, providential mission, ritual, and theological legitimacy. Together, those mechanisms can help sustain a struggle far longer than coercion alone.

That is why the sequence matters. The speeches were public. The economic recovery was visible. The military rebuilding was measurable. The energy dependence was visible. Georgia happened. Crimea happened. The religious language intensified. The full-scale invasion happened.

The problem may be that we kept treating each event as separate.

What if they were never separate?

What if the early appeals to preserve a common historical space, the cooperation of the early Putin years, the rebuilding of Russian power, Europe’s growing dependence, the increasingly confrontational rhetoric, the use of force, and the presentation of war as a sacred mission form a connected strategic progression?

That is the argument I am asking you to consider. Western governments too often discounted these public ambitions or assumed that cooperation would contain them. Judge that assessment against the dated statements and actions. Look at the sequence. Then decide whether the strategy was really hiding at all.

SEE. UNDERSTAND. ACT.

I support Ukraine. I oppose Russia's aggression against Ukraine. I believe Ukraine has the right to exist as a sovereign nation and that Russia should not be rewarded for taking another country's territory by force.

Please take action

Please contact your United States senators and your representative in Congress. Tell them plainly:

“I support Ukraine. I oppose Russian aggression. I want the United States to stand firmly with Ukraine and help it defend its people, freedom, and sovereignty. Russia should not be rewarded for taking another country’s territory by force.”

Do not assume someone else will speak. A phone call or an email takes only a few minutes.

You can also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your senators or representative.

Find and contact your U.S. representative:

https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Find and contact your U.S. senators:

https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

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Use USAGov’s Contact Your Elected Officials tool to get contact information for your members of Congress, the president, and state and local officials.

https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

Evil triumphs when good people see what is happening and choose to do nothing.

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← Previous: Part 3: Do You Have Eyes to See? · Upcoming: Part 5: The Price of Dependence →

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