It is important to understand that Russia's historical memory is playing a key role in what is occurring now around the country. There are challenges around the periphery from obviously Ukraine to the far east.

Axar.az reports that Dr Theodore Karasik, an American expert and senior adviser at the Gulf State Analytical Center, stated this while commenting on the future of Moscow in the current regional and geopolitical situation.

According to the expert, currently, the fascination with Russian history in politics is part of the larger picture of the 30th anniversary of the Soviet implosion:

"This still resides in Russian president Putin's thinking and is quite noticeable in his meetings and discussions with other leaders both inside and outside the country. The geopolitical and geographic trajectory of this type of sentiment polls Russia and China closer together and that's quite evident in a number of different theatres. This doesn't mean that they get along in every issue and they have fought over legal jurisdiction on particular assets in Africa for example."

The expert also stated that however, their military to the military relationship is quite strong and this is the factor for the next 5 to 10 years:

"The coming to power of the Taliban and the establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan presents an opportunity to coalesce security interests around this development and that is why the upcoming Shanghai cooperation organization meeting is important. Iran is to join that process takes two years but the point is made. Russia Iranian relations are set to grow and China calculates into that to make an important triangulation. This triangulation supports Russian objectives and Moscow is able to use such activity in which to weave and take advantage of particular situations in which to score geopolitical or geoeconomic points.

Karasik also spoke about the current economic situation in Russia:

"Finally, there's debate about Russia's ability to continue it economically the way it does and many of these estimates are done without consideration of grey economy and other malign activity which helps Russia achieve its goals. So domestically of course there are economic problems but the nature of the Russian state continues to be robust as demonstrated by the increasing fascination with the late 1930s. At this moment Russia does not face any scenario where it has a collapse. The state is heading towards the very important Duma election and there will be moves in which to create a more robust Union state with Belarus. Particular regions of the country need attention and there is a big push by Moscow to develop the Far East and particularly the establishment of a free trade zone around the Kurile Island chain."

According to the political analyst, this type of investment flow and direction will attract a great amount of interest when it is ready for the market:

"It's the same type of thinking regarding the development of the northern sea route. These moves help Russia in a new geo-economic context in which climate change is playing a major role. Again Russia has Russian problems but Russia will figure it out because Russia has been doing that for a thousand years. The array of military exercises across Eurasian involving Russia and China and other armies "of the east" is testimony to the increasing securitization and counterterrorism mission emerging for these countries."

Karasik mentioned that Russian federation politics are heading into a political season that is tightly controlled for the outcome:

"The objective of course is to get to the union state concept ultimately. Within the federation, itself is a number of very important and significant amount of work that needs to be done among the population belt that runs along with the country from west to east. In individual republics, the ties between the Kremlin and the capital of these entities are subject to a lot of push and pull. There is an increasing look at how the federal units of the Russian federation interact with each other..." - he stated.