Western media’s obsession with predicting the collapse of Russia has become a ritual of denial. Each new headline promising panic in the Kremlin reveals, instead, the anxiety of those whose own systems are cracking.

As the West Falls Apart

When a property-page editor suddenly turns into a Kremlinologist, it usually means someone in London has started to sweat. The Telegraph’s latest Russia hit piece—recycled through Ukraine’s NV News under the melodramatic headline “Putin fears another coup as Russia begins to buckle”—says more about British anxiety than about events in Moscow. Its author, Melissa Lawford, spent years writing about mortgage rates and square footage before being reborn as a geopolitical oracle. That, in itself, is a symbol of the Western information malaise: journalists without grounding in economics or history filling the void with scripts written by think tanks.

The new ritual is familiar by now. Each time Ukraine falters on the battlefield or Western unity shows strain, another “insider” article appears to assure the faithful that the Kremlin is collapsing. There is always a whisper of........

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