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Fascist? I don’t think so. Full-blown fascism requires at its base a blood-and-soil cult and/or an ethnic ideology with religious or mystical overtones. That element exists in Russia, but Putin is not part of it, and (I would venture) probably considers it more of a potential problem than a source of power.

Ideology has never been the source of true power in Russia. Under the czars, rabble-rousing idea men often ended up in Siberia (or floating in the Neva); under Soviet rule, ideologues like Trotsky similarly tended to attract the attention of Great Stalin, and similarly ended up dead. Those who (like Putin) survived and prospered under the Soviet system had to be masters of Realpolitik. As a former KGB officer, Putin is therefore likely more Machiavelli than Mussolini.

In my view, Russia is less a fascist state than a kleptocracy — a nation ruled by gangsters. As long as that remains true, Putin and his cronies will likely talk big, but will keep from provoking their neighbors to the west too severely. After all, gangsters prefer to profit from intimidation rather than outright theft; violence tends to attract the attention of the cops, as well as cutting into the gang’s bottom line. As long as Putin & Co. can shake down the rest of Europe for needed capital and juicy business deals, they will.

You are describing German Nazism. Italian fascism was not based on blood and soil mysticism. Fascism is simply a form of socialism in which the state does not abolish private property, but controls corporations for its own purposes. Putin's nationalization of energy resources for the purposes of using them as political blackmail weapons is fascist.

In addition, Putin is in fact part of the ethnic Russian nazi fascism and has launched state-backed krystalnacht style pogroms against the Georgians in Russia as well as other targeted ethnic minorities. He is also stirring up ethnic Russian nazism in the Russian diaspora, such as the Baltic states. This mirrors Hitler's demands on behalf of Sudeten Germans and others of the ethnic German diaspora.

OK - except Fascist Germany was run by corporate gangsters, chief among them Hermann Goering. Didn’t keep the Nazis from designing some absolutely superb weapons systems, though.

`Blood and Soil’? Nothing exclusively Teutonic about that:

“Wherever a Russian soldier plants his boot, that is sacred Russian soil forever.” - Lenin

Putin’s messages to the Ukrainians and the Balts:

“We just want you back. And we want you back right now.”