Commentary After President Biden’s face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva this week, I couldn’t help but think of my trip to Russia in 1993. I was on a congressional delegation visiting Moscow when Boris Yeltsin was president and the West had great hopes for a more open, democratic Russia. I went to see the then-vice president, who was an Air Force general, in his office. One entire wall of the room was a map of the Soviet Union. Being cheerfully ignorant, I said to him, “Gosh, that’s a map of the Soviet Union.” He looked at me and he responded,” Yes, and that’s what it’ll look like again.” Putin himself has expressed similar sentiments, calling the collapse of the Soviet empire the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. One can’t underestimate how important Putin’s experience as a Soviet agent in the KGB was—and is—to his mindset today. Indeed, …
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