And now for the last look. for all of putin s outlandish claims of wanting to de-nazi phi ukraine, his real ames have been evident from the start. turn rg the country into a puppet state and restoring some of the lost glory of the soviet empire. but this war has shown how little moscow has actually gotten from cultivating its own sphere of influence since the soviet union collapsed. after the cold war, most of the former communist states in europe took a fiercely anti-russian stance and joined nato or the european union. other countries in central asia, for example, stayed in moscow s orbit. in 1992, they formed the collective security treaty organization or cfto, russia s counterpart to nato. current members are armenia,