The Russian Bear and... Texas??

Politico has a strange story. I suppose it's a trick worthy of an old-school KGB guy like Putin to stoke secessionist feeling in an enemy nation, but it's a little surprising to find that anyone in Texas would go along with it once it was openly Russian support they were receiving.

Nor is Texas the lone region for which Russia has cast secessionist support since the Crimean seizure. Venice, Scotland, Catalonia—the Russian media have voiced fervent support for secession in all these Western allies. (Of course, Moscow’s mantra—secession for thee, but not for me—means you’d be hard-pressed to find any Russian official offering support for Siberian, Tatar, or Chechen independence.) “Since the destabilization of the West is on Russia’s agenda, they may try to reach out to the U.S. separatists,” Anton Shekhovtsov, a researcher on Moscow’s links to far-right movements in Europe, told me. Russia wants a “deepening of social divisions in the American society, destabilizing the internal political life.”

Good news! That seems to be right at the top of our own agenda.