Where is the best source for following up directly on this following sentence, which grabbed my interest right away when I first read it: You wrote that Russia is trying to "unite the conservative parties of Europe and the US as subordinate organs of their government"---where can I learn more about that plan? That is interesting. :think:
Ah...that is an interesting question, and it involves significantly more reading between the lines.
Of course, there's Ukraine:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/10/31/manafort-pro-russia-party-report/816242001/
I'd say, start here, in Austria:
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-austria-freedom-party-pact-putins-party/28185013.html
Then here, to France:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/24/vladimir-putin-hosts-marine-le-pen-in-moscow
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39478066
And Hungary (as well as Spain and Catalonia):
http://www.newsweek.com/2018/04/27/...annon-nationalism-iron-curtain-eu-891843.html
And Italy:
https://www.politico.eu/article/ita...-bufale-misinformation-vladimir-putin-russia/
And Brexit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum
And in the United States, there are two main avenues of connections made to conservatives. One is the NRA, and the other is through Evangelical organizations:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...filtrate-the-nra-and-help-elect-trump-630054/
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/11/nra-russia-money-guns-516804
https://thinkprogress.org/religious-right-russia-3e80e2ea2e4a/
https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2018/02/23/why-billy-graham-went-to-russia
Of course, Putin doesn't only reach out to conservative groups. He also empowers forces on the fringe of the Left, such as the Green Party in the US, and the Catalonian Independence movement isn't really a conservative movement, but, these are only suitable as useful idiots, or maybe fellow travelers, because they aren't ultimately ideologically compatible with his own movement. He uses them to divide the Left in the face of his more preferred actors. The conservative movements that he forms informal alliances with will actually take a patronage relationship with him.
This is older, but some of it is still applicable:
https://www.politico.eu/article/the...on-geert-wilders-alexis-tsipras-viktor-orban/