They are preparing Russia for a war. The propagandise. They intimidate. They threaten. Kinzhal (Dagger), Sarmat, Poseidon, Peresvet… Endless news about the “newest deadly” weapons. “Wonderful,” Putin says, “a gift to the country for the New Year is the Avangard missile.”

And the other day there was a real militaristic hysteria in the Russian media – they published dozens of reports about the upcoming battle with NATO: who have better missiles, whose weapons are to “burn first”, the horror stories of possible war scenarios. They match their weapons [against the enemy’s weapons], quoting “brave domestic experts” who promise to shower the “damned West” with all these Daggers and Sarmats.

The war hysteria is being forced and can bring to a real war. There are forces in the country that are striving for this. They do not care that Russia’s GDP is less than 2 per cent of the world economy and that now a huge share of everything our country disposes of is going into an arms race (and is being mercilessly plundered at the same time). Very few people may know if all these missiles exist in reality or in the form of cartoons only, but everyone knows that a fifth of Russian families are deprived of access to normal sewage and that poverty has been growing for over five years.