There was a window of time where it felt Russia could be economically brought into the modern world. But that window was a mirage based on rampant optimism and ignorance given what we (the public) has now gotten to know about Russia. But you expect the experts and those that engage in high-level geopolitics to have far better knowledge and judgement of the situations.

Safe to say your question is open-ended given examples like Putin actually believing his intelligence advisors about Ukraine, when obviously he has set up a situation where they would and could only tell him exactly what he wanted to hear.

Oh yea.....she was supposed to be super young. Yea, that would have been weird.;

30 feet