Title page
Contents
Summary 5
Introduction 16
Myth 01. 'Russia and the West are as "bad" as each other' 20
Myth 02. 'Russia and the West want the same thing' 25
Myth 03. 'Russia was promised that NATO would not enlarge' 30
Myth 04. 'Russia is not in a conflict with the West' 35
Myth 05. 'We need a new pan-European security architecture that includes Russia' 40
Myth 06. 'We must improve the relationship with Russia, even without Russian concessions, as it is too important' 44
Myth 07. 'Russia is entitled to a defensive perimeter - a sphere of "privileged interests" including the territory of other states' 49
Myth 08. 'We must drive a wedge between Russia and China to impede their ability to act in tandem against Western interests' 53
Myth 09. 'The West's relations with Russia must be normalized in order to counter the rise of China' 59
Myth 10. 'The Eurasian Economic Union is a genuine and meaningful counterpart to the EU' 65
Myth 11. 'The peoples of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are one nation' 72
Myth 12. 'Crimea was always Russian' 77
Myth 13. 'Liberal market reform in the 1990s was bad for Russia' 84
Myth 14. 'Sanctions are the wrong approach' 88
Myth 15. 'It's all about Putin - Russia is a manually run, centralized autocracy' 93
Myth 16. 'What comes after Putin must be better than Putin' 98
Conclusion 103
About the authors 106
Acknowledgments 111