It's hard to see the current Russian govt abandoning this very useful narrative that flatters its self-esteem, excuses its mistakes, and acts as a powerful propaganda tool. It's one reason why I think there's no prospect of returning Russia-West relations to business as usual.

And a narrative in which Russia has been under a decades-long attack from the world's most powerful state is also important for consolidating domestic opinion behind an otherwise pointless war that has done such immense damage to Russia.

It also helps the Russian govt to explain to itself why it continued to be a relatively weak, unsuccessful international actor - no need to accept responsibility for your own underperformance when you can blame it on the Americans.

Of course, the idea that the US is focused on a multi-dimensional global conspiracy to deny Russia its natural status as a great power is much more comforting to Russian self-esteem than the idea that Moscow really didn't matter very much to Washington before 2022.

From the mid-late 00s onwards, and particularly since 2014, the Russian govt sees pretty much everything the US does from under a giant tinfoil hat with "Russia is the centre of everyone's world" written on it.

Lavrov's claim that the US push to admit Georgia to NATO was all about a nefarious US plot against Russia is typical of the last 15 years. For the Russian govt, Russia is at the centre of US foreign policy - presumably because the US is at the centre of theirs.

It's the same error we can see repeatedly in US policy towards Russia and the other states that were previously part of the USSR - act in ways that will antagonise Russia, without also acting to hedge against Russian aggression. It's a product of inattention and complacency.

But the US should have been alert to the risks of encouraging Georgia to join NATO when there wasn't a realistic prospect of it succeeding. Russia had consistently used its military to undermine Georgian sovereignty, to protect its own strategic interests.

This is not to say, of course, that the war was the West's fault. Responsibility for 30+ years of Russian attacks on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia rests with the Russian govt.

If the Bush administration had either paid enough attention to the region or been more realistic about the limits of US power, this wouldn't have happened. It was obvious at the time that France and Germany wouldn't approve Georgia and Ukraine's accession to NATO.