In recent years, in the international public debate, there is a term that has gained land at a surprising speed: Russian. It has become the rhetorical passepartout of the Moscow supporters, their grimaldello to overturn any criticism of the foreign or internal policy of the Kremlin. Just pronounce it and the game is done: the opponent is painted as prevented, irrational, hostile to an entire people. But the truth is that this word, as it is used, is a semantic trap.

The ghost of “Russophobia”

Because today’s Russia is not a country where the people have a voice in political decisions. It is not an imperfect democracy, it is not a republic in crisis: it is an autocracy in all respects. Vladimir Putin is his absolute master, and his authority extends without counterweights. In a similar context, talking about “Russian people” in a political sense is an error of perspective: the population is not an active actor, but a passive mass, a human resource at the service of the state and at the same time a weight to be dragged into the directions decided by the summit.

So if there is something that deserves hostility or distrust, it is not “Russia” as an abstract entity, and less than every single Russian citizen. The only legitimate goal of a feeling of “phobia” – understood as rational diffidence, not as an irrational fear – is the regime itself, with its apparatus and its leader.

It is not a small distinction. The Kremlin plays right on the confusion between the state and the people, between regime and nation. It is an old trick: merged the national identity with the figure of the leader, so that every criticism of power automatically becomes an attack on the homeland. But the reality is that most of the Russians does not oppose Putin. He does not challenge him, he doesn’t question him. The presidential elections, from three rounds, do not offer any credible political alternative.

They are not competitions, but masked plebiscites, in which the only vaguely interesting data is the turnout. And this too, although filtered by statistical manipulation, tells a clear story: the majority of citizens do not question the existing order. It accepts it, suffers it or supports it. And when – as history teaches – autocrates falls, those same apathetic populations know how to turn into crazy ready to erect patiboli, but only to games made.

It is starting from this frame that we can understand why to talk about “Russophobia” is an operation of political sidetracking. The point is not Russia in itself, but the shiny and coherent design of the Kremlin, a design that crosses the centuries and which today finds its most skilled and stubborn interpreter in Putin.

Divide to win, a secular strategy

Russia has always looked to the West – the Zapadas they call it in Moscow – with a mixture of admiration and diffidence, a complex of technological inferiority and moral superiority. It is a contradiction that crosses the story, from Tsar to Bolsheviks, and that has always produced the same strategy: dividing to govern.

Pietro the Great, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had a clear goal: to prevent Austria and France from forming a compact block against St. Petersburg. At the time, Austria was not only the heart of central Europe, but incorporated most of Germany and northern Italy; France could count on the Spanish alliance. Two centuries later, in the heart of the twentieth century, the priority was still the same: to separate Germany from western democracies.

The URSS of the Cold War did not exception. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Nazi Germany was a perfect example of geopolitical pragmatism: a temporary alliance with an ideological enemy, justified by the immediate strategic advantage. Later, when Berlin became the main front of the clash with the West, Moscow invested enormous resources to feed divisions between the United States and western Europe.

Putin inherited this tradition and adapted it to the 21st century. His “hybrid war” is not only made of tanks and missiles, but of disinformation campaigns, support for extremist movements, interference in the elections. The goal is always the same: to find the crack and put on, weakening the compactness of the enemy.

It does not matter who the ally on duty is: it can be the Argentina of the colonels in the 80s, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Iran of the Ayatollah or European nationalist anti-EU nationalists. Ideological affinity does not count. Convenience counts. Brexit was one of these moments: every force that could weaken the European Union has found a silent but determined ally in Putin.

In this sense, Putin is no different from Stalin: pragmatic to cynicism, ready to change alliances when convenience changes.

Trump and the short circuit of the hybrid war

For years, Russian fiction has worked perfectly: Europe as the United States vassal, unable to autonomy. Then Donald Trump came, and the mechanism was jammed.

Trump, hostile to multilateral institutions and determined to dismantle Joe Biden’s political legacy, married some of the themes of Russian propaganda. For Putin, it was almost a dream: an American president who spoke like a Kremlin spokesman.

But this apparent convergence had an unexpected side effect: it made traditional narrative less credible. If Trump’s America is no longer hostile to Russia, how do you explain Ukrainian resistance? And how to justify the fact that Europe continues to support Kyiv even when Washington changes route?

Result: Europe has passed, in Russian propaganda, from “Gregario dell’America” to the main enemy. A reversal that also displaced the western sympathizers of the Kremlin, accustomed to painting Brussels as weak and irrelevant.

Gaza and the war of attention

Russian propaganda understood that, on the Ukrainian front, the decisive victories are slow to arrive. Keeping the reflector on that war means remembering the difficulties of the Russian army every day. So, here is the change of scene: Gaza becomes the new center of speech.

Not because it is irrelevant, but because it offers propaganda an advantage: it allows you to talk about direct “western faults”, to accuse governments and institutions of hypocrisy, to divide European public opinions and leadership.

In Ukraine, almost 2,000 people per day die, about 200 in the worst moments in Gaza. Still, the second conflict often dominates the news. This movement of attention is strategic: the less we speak of Kyiv, the less political consensus there is to support it.

Putin, Trump and the geopolitical theater

Putin insists on the hypothesis of a meeting with Trump and ignore Brussels and Zelensky. It is a symbolic operation:

• reaffirm the bipolar logic of the world (Moscow and Washington as peer);
• marginalize Europe;
• delegitimize Ukraine.

But it is also theater: Trump does not have the mandate to deal with Kyiv, and a substantial understanding is impossible. However, the image is needed, not the content: a stage that tells the respective public “we are the protagonists”.

Europe at the forefront

Here is reality: Europe is no longer a supporting actor. Whether he wants him or not, he is at the forefront of a geopolitical clash that will define his future. Ukraine is part of the western “we”, and defending it means defending ourselves.

Those who speak of “russophobia” mind: it is not fear that it is, but of lucidity. Putin’s regime has a hostile and coherent project, and scenographic encounters or declarations of principle will not stop him. Only a strategy, internal cohesion and awareness that every distraction, every division, is a gift to the Kremlin will stop him.