Thursday, January 8, 2026

Nikolai Karpitsky. Russia Lives in a Looking-Glass World. There, it is already at war with the West



Russia continues to retain the initiative and achieve successes on the battlefield not only because of its own actions, but also because both Ukraine and Western countries repeatedly find themselves unprepared for each new round of military escalation in Europe. Four such rounds can be identified: the occupation of Crimea (2014), the invasion of eastern Ukraine (2014), the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (2022), and the transition to a war of attrition (2023). Will there be a fifth round of military escalation – an invasion of the Baltic states?

Common Sense Is Inapplicable to the Analysis of Russia’s Actions

At each stage, Russia could have been stopped. In 2014, Russia was not yet ready for a full-scale war, but the West, instead of providing military assistance to Ukraine, pushed it toward capitulation within the framework of the Minsk process. The Russian army as it existed in 2022 could not threaten the West and was defeated in Ukraine; however, the West failed to seize this opportunity and allowed the conflict to turn into a prolonged war of attrition – for which Ukraine was also unprepared.

Today, the balance of military power has shifted in Russia’s favor, and once it completes a large-scale reform of its armed forces, Europe’s military lag will grow even greater.

Professional analysts, the broader public, and political leadership – both in Ukraine and in the West – have all made misjudgments because they assumed the applicability of common sense: the belief that political actors understand their own interests in light of reality and act accordingly. War is disadvantageous not only from the standpoint of Russia’s interests, but even from the perspective of the narrow, self-serving interests of Russia’s ruling elites.

From the standpoint of common sense, it seemed that Putin would not start a war, since he already possessed everything he could want: enormous revenues from hydrocarbon exports, vast international influence, unchallenged personal power, and an economically dependent Ukraine. What sense was there in risking everything by launching a war that could bring only losses?

Any assessment of events – whether at the level of everyday assumptions or scholarly analysis – is always made within a particular worldview. It may seem obvious that people do not want war; yet we observe that the flow of volunteers into the Russian army has not dried up, nor do we see mass condemnation of the war within Russia. Without this passive support, Russia would not be able to sustain the war for so long. Support for the war is explained by the fact that Putin’s worldview has already taken hold in the mass consciousness of Russian society.

The Worldview of the Soviet and Russian Looking-Glass Reality

There are two types of worldviews.

1. A worldview adequate to reality. This type is based on the principle of correspondence to reality itself. For example, the physical worldview is grounded in correspondence with the results of observation and experiment, while the worldview of contemporary Western politicians is based on aligning actions and beliefs with economic and political interests.

2. A worldview detached from reality. Here, the truth of any judgment is tested not by its correspondence to reality, but by its correspondence to the worldview itself. If facts cannot be fitted into it, they are ignored. Such a worldview must be internally coherent in order to replace reality.

In the first case, human consciousness is directed toward reality itself; in the second, toward an image of reality. Let us draw an analogy. Some operating systems work directly with a computer as a physical device; others operate through a virtual machine – an image of that computer created in a virtual environment.

At first glance, such an operating system may appear to function independently of the physical computer; however, if the hardware fails, the entire virtual environment ceases to function as well. Something similar happens in the social realm.

A worldview detached from reality may be entirely fantastical, as in the case of the “Flat Earth Society,” or it may mirror reality and, for that very reason, be sufficiently coherent to compete with a worldview that is adequate to reality. The coherence of the Soviet looking-glass worldview was ensured by the fact that it systematically reflected external phenomena while reversing their meanings: what was considered unacceptable everywhere else in the world was deemed necessary in the Soviet system, and vice versa.

Freedom of enterprise was portrayed as exploitation, while a one-party dictatorship was presented as popular rule; Soviet censorship was framed as freedom of speech, while freedom of speech in the West was described as manipulation of public opinion, and so on.

However, the fact that the standard of living of ordinary people in the West was significantly higher than in the Soviet Union did not fit into the Soviet worldview at all, so people were simply deceived about it. When, amid an economic crisis, they gained the opportunity to compare their own lives with life in the West, the coherence of the Soviet worldview collapsed – and with it, the Soviet Union itself.

Russian propaganda appears looser and more eclectic than Soviet propaganda, but precisely for that reason it is able to ignore contradictions and incorporate almost any fact into its looking-glass worldview.

Within the Russian looking-glass reality, as the evaluation of facts changes, the facts themselves appear to change as well. For example, Ukraine’s independence is first portrayed as an evil and a threat to Russia; then, in accordance with this assessment, Russia’s attack on Ukraine is perceived as a “response,” as if Ukraine had struck first. In this way, Russia’s own aggression is attributed to the victim.

In the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainians were shocked by the fact that the Russian army was deliberately striking residential neighborhoods – but even more shocking was that their close relatives not only refused to believe them, but also imposed their own interpretation: “This is all for your sake! Just wait – our troops will soon liberate you from the Nazis!”

Stalinists preserved the integrity of their worldview either by denying facts or by assigning them the opposite meaning. In response to publications about the scale of Stalinist repression, they would say either, “That never happened!” or, “There wasn’t enough of it – they should have shot even more!”

In the Russian mass consciousness, these two principles operate simultaneously: on the one hand, eyewitness testimony from the war is denied; on the other, the war itself is evaluated positively. As a result, the looking-glass worldview of such Russians is so robust that it is virtually impossible to persuade them otherwise. That is why most Ukrainians consider communication with them pointless.

In the Russian Looking-Glass Reality, the Baltic States Are an Outpost of Western Civilization

While a rational person reacts to an event directly, a bearer of the Russian mass consciousness reacts only after the event has been reflected in the looking-glass worldview. That is, the thought process is triggered not at the moment a person learns new facts, but when those facts receive a new interpretation within that worldview. This delay in reaction is always noticeable and makes such a person recognizable, even if they attempt to pass as rational.

For the same reason, Russia will not attack a country until Russian propagandists place it at the center of the Russian looking-glass – into the position reserved for the enemy. At present, that position is occupied by Ukraine.

In the Russian worldview, the Baltic states are portrayed as an outpost of Western civilization on what is perceived as Russia’s historical territory. Therefore, an attack on them would be supported by Russian society in much the same way as the attack on Ukraine. However, at the moment, the Baltic states remain on the periphery of Russian propaganda, making an attack on them in the near future unlikely – although military preparations for such a scenario continue.

Before any attack, the Russian information space must begin talking about Lithuanian, Latvian, or Estonian “Nazis.” This propaganda-induced delay makes it possible to recognize Russia’s next military aggression in advance. To assess the real threat of a new war in time, it is pointless to analyze Russia’s economic conditions or political interests, since the actions of the Russian authorities do not follow the logic of rational actors. Instead, one must monitor processes within Russian mass consciousness.


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