The West as always gets Russia's motivations wrong.

Being students of history, especially recent history, Putin/Medvedev recognize that Russia's social system is too fresh out of the USSR to successfully implement a Western style democracy and succeed. Such systems take decades, even centuries to develop into what we see today in self-described Western Democracies.

The UK's process started with the Magna Carta.

The United States worked the kinks out of her system only in the 1960s (with the civil rights laws) almost 200yrs. after the nation was founded.

Russia is fortunate to have leaders who realized just how deadly foisting "democracy" upon a population that never experienced it before, let alone a full-blown capitalist system upon an entire population that had only known Soviet style economics and been taught Capitalism was the root of all evil.

Their own sad 90s experience quickly disabused even the most progressive Russians of any notion that Western Democracies actually had any desire to help her once she shed communism.

Instead her pleas for help while down were met by a pack of revenge seeking cannibals who sought to tear the nation apart even beyond the break up of the USSR.

A quick look at nations around the world reveals what happens to countries that have not established a strong national framework to support the rigors of Democracy.

They are the failing states, poverty ridden 3rd. world disasters whose future hopes and dreams were destroyed by the strong men who took advantage of those nascent nations naivety and uneducated masses to take dictatorial absolute control.

Africans in particular have suffered this fate.

The Colonial powers left their colonies in the hands of nascent Democratic governments.

Run by people and to be elected by people with NO experience and NO understanding of the basic supporting principals, they were easy prey for the predators among nations.

And those predators aren't just people, but other nations and corporations all to happy for such nations to remain mired in poverty and unable to demand their fair share of their own wealth when shipped off overseas.

Team Putin stepped in just as Russia was about to be pushed off that Cliff by the West.

So it's no wonder that the current government finds everything and anything the Western nations say as suspect, and believe their only goal is to destroy Russia and gain control of her resources.

They believe that, because that almost happened. The original oligarchs were the West's inside men and went far in their attempt to achieve this goal.

Disillusioned by the promise of Western Democracy, Russia looks to a much better model, PRChina.

There democracy NEVER took hold, even as the Chinese economy took off like a rocket.
And it took off precisely because they shunned the same advice Russia took to heart when the USSR failed.

The PRChina's one party system is far from perfect, but what it has achieved vs. a vs. Russia's failed attempt to democratize, vs. what the end results of Democracy were in so many states too new to be able to withstand the stresses is awe inspiring, especially in Russia's eyes.

In the Russian mind I bet, they feel strongly that if they had followed the Chinese path, they'd be strong and prosperous, not a nation dependent on supplying raw materials to more developed nations, and at the cold mercy of the boom and bust cycle of the Western economic system.

Putin and Medvedev's goal is obvious and is NO threat to the West should the West ever appraise those goals fairly.

Their goal is to rewind the clock so to speak, to get as close to the beginning of the process that led to the current state of affairs of Russia, and once they can rewind no further, to implement wholesale the PRChinese system of government and economic management.

Naturally reigning in and often eliminating parties that place their own agenda over the well-being of Russia is essential.

If those parties were truly in the style of the Tories, Labor, Democrats Etc. then Western critics would have a point, but they ARE not.

Many of these so called parties started out as tools of the oligarchs to manipulate the then very new and still to weak Russian Central Government to extract more wealth for themselves and transport as much as they could to the West free of charge save for the cost of the transfers.

Some were thinly veiled nationalist parties whose sole agenda was to tear a chunk of territory off from Russia to form their own state, taking Russians living there with them.

Those are typical of the reasons for Russia's actions today, and the driving forces behind current relations with the West.

Clearly not among those forces is any desire to "defeat" the West, for the effort to "defeat" the West would necessarily destroy Russia.

And being Patriots of the first order Putin/Medvedev do not seek their nation's destruction pursuing unachievable goals.

Perhaps one day Western Leaders (maybe Obama) will have an epiphany in regards to what drives Russia, and make an honest effort to build respectful and proper relations with Russia.

Essential to doing so is understanding that for every reason western governments can think of to justify their enduring "cold war way of thinking vs a vs Russia" Russia has 2 reasons to justify not trusting the West and its advice on progress and modernization.

Until that day comes, Russia will do what has to in order to build a future for Russia without making any effort to explain their motivations.

For they know trying to explain that to the still "mired in the cold-war way of thinking" West is a waste of time.