Russia has struggled in Ukraine, but everyone else has still lost

MIDDLE ISRAEL: Moscow’s strategic setbacks in Ukraine have yet to spell victory for anyone else.
Having listened to Nikolai Gogol read to him from his Dead Souls, which mocked feudal Russia through a plan to buy dead serfs’ souls, Alexander Pushkin at one point burst into laughter only to suddenly turn pensive and say in despair: “God, how sad our Russia is.”