Reality check, once again! Vladimir Putin is no friend of the United States. Don’t be fooled for one nanosecond.

There are those who will steadfastly maintain that Mr. Putin’s Russia wants nothing more than to share the wealth and live harmoniously with its best bud, the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Terms like “win-win” and “power-sharing” do not exist in the strategic thinking of Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin is all about himself first and foremost, but he is not stupid. In fact, he is a cunning chess player who thinks many moves ahead. He is the winner at the moment, and I fear that his winning streak has not ended.

Maybe we won the Cold War, and maybe the entity known as the USSR is gone for good, but it would be the worst kind of miscalculation to forget that many of the same strategic targets across the U.S. are still active and under continued threat by many of the same (and some greatly enhanced) thermonuclear warheads that threatened us for those exceedingly dangerous years of the Cold War.

My thinking has not profoundly changed since the Cold War, and I am 10 years younger than Mr. Putin is. I wonder if this man, who loyally served the KGB from 1975 to 1991, has profoundly changed his thinking, especially in terms of who his adversaries are.

David J. Wallace

Brunswick