This is Jacobin Radio, I'm Suzy Weisman, and on today's program, we're very fortunate

to have both Thuncroftchenko with us to look at the bigger picture of Putin's regime

in Russia.

What is driving Putin's policies?

What is at stake in the dangerously escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine?

And are Putin's actions designed to increase domestic political support?

Or are they aimed at negotiating with the United States to keep NATO at bay?

And if so, is this a cynical geopolitical gamble with the West?

Or is it more to distract his own population from their grievances around growing inequality

and the lack of democratic rights?

With 100,000 or more Russian troops amassing on the border with Ukraine, the use of troops

and the use of Russian troops recently to aid in crushing dissent in Kazakhstan, and before

that into hoots with Lukashenko over the migrant crisis in Belarus and on the Polish border,

we're going to ask Bukhtan what he thinks.

This dangerous saber rattling means, Bukhtan Croftchenko, welcome to Jacobin Radio.

And I wanted to just properly introduce you, Bukhtan Croftchenko is Dean of the Graduate

School of Development and the former Director General of the University of Central Asia.

And that's a real university with campuses in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan

and the program in Afghanistan, and he travels between them.

But we're speaking today in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, far from here.

And until 1991, Bukhtan was a professor and then a director at the Canadian Institute of

Ukraine in studies at the University of Albertan Edmonton.

...