[bsenftner]

"Elites have hijacked Russia and conflated the country's interests with their own"

Um... Replace "Russia" with the name of any nation on earth, and the sentence remains true.

As an individual with an Economics graduate degree, The Economist strikes me as such a flimsy propaganda rag, it's sad and pathetic it has any attention at all.

[invalidname]

Nonsesnse. That's a false equivalency.

Elites have power everywhere. True. But Russia is right now a dictatorship where the elite who kiss the ring of Putin are protected. The others get jailed or worse.

There's an inner circle that decides to go to war and can make that decision without congressional approval. They can mount false flag operations (as they are doing right now) and literally attack unprovoked against the interests of the Russian people.

[bsenftner]

Sounds just like every nation...