Putin's war is a special operation against modernity. The invasion has been directed against
Ukraine but the war has a broader target: the modern world of climate awareness energy
transition and digital labor. By trading oil and gas promoting Trump and Brexit spreading
corruption boosting inequality and homophobia subsidizing far-right movements and destroying
Ukraine Putin's clique aims at suppressing the ongoing transformation of modern societies.
Alexander Etkind distinguishes between Russia's pompous weaponized paleomodernity on the one
hand and the lean decentralized gaiamodernity of the Anthropocene on the other. Putin's
clique has used various strategies - from climate denialism and electoral interference to war
and genocide - to resist and subvert modernity. Working on political cultural and even
demographic levels social mechanisms convert the vicious energy of the oil curse into all-out
aggression. Dissecting these mechanisms Etkind's brief but rigorous analyses of social
structuration cultural dynamics and family models reveal the agency that drives the Russian
war against modernity. This short sharp critique of the Russian regime combines political
economy social history and demography to predict the decolonizing and defederating of Russia.
