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Reading the mind of Russian President Vladimir Putin is rarely something direct, but occasionally the Kremlin leader makes it easy.
Such was the case on Thursday, when Putin met with a group of young Russian entrepreneurs. Anyone looking for information on what could be the end of Putin’s game for Ukraine should read the transcript, published here in English.
Putin’s words speak for themselves: What he aims at in Ukraine is the return of Russia as an imperial power.
Many observers quickly picked up one of Putin’s most provocative lines, in which he compared himself to Peter the Great, the modernizing tsar of Russia and the founder of St. Petersburg, Putin’s birthplace, who came to power in the late 17th century. to.
“Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years,” said a calm and seemingly complacent Putin. “At first glance, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from him… He was not taking anything away, he was coming back. “That’s how it was.”
It did not matter that European countries did not recognize Peter the Great’s forcible occupation of the territory, Putin added.
“When he founded the new capital, none of the European countries recognized this territory as part of Russia; “Everyone recognized him as part of Sweden.” “However, from ancient times the Slavs lived there together with the Finno-Ugric peoples and this territory was under the control of Russia. The same goes for the western direction, Narva and his first campaigns. Why would he go there? “He was coming back and getting stronger, that’s what he was doing.”
Directly alluding to his invasion of Ukraine, Putin added: “Of course, it was up to us to go back and strengthen as well.”
These comments were quickly condemned by Ukrainians, who saw them as a naked admission of Putin’s imperial ambitions.
“Putin’s confession of seizing lands and comparing himself to Peter the Great proves: there was no ‘conflict’, only bloody sequestration of the country under fabricated pretexts of genocide,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. We should not talk about “saving the face.” [Rusisë]”, But for its immediate de-imperialization.”
There is much to break down here, both in terms of history and current issues. Podolyak was alluding to speaking in international capitals to offer Putin a way to save face to de-escalate or stop fighting in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron has led the accusation, saying last weekend that the world “should not humiliate Russia” in seeking a diplomatic solution.
These arguments could have seemed more reasonable before February 24th. On the eve of the invasion, Putin filed a series of complaints to justify the war, from NATO’s eastward expansion to the provision of military aid from the west to Ukraine.
But read the transcript of Putin’s comments Thursday and the facade of rational geopolitical bargaining will disappear.
“To claim some kind of leadership – I’m not even talking about global leadership, I mean leadership in every field – every country, every people, every ethnic group must secure its sovereignty,” Putin said. “Because there is no intermediary state, no intermediate state: either a country is sovereign or it is a colony, no matter what the colonies are called.”
In other words, there are two categories of state: sovereign and conquered. According to Putin’s imperial view, Ukraine should fall into the latter category.
Putin has long argued that Ukrainians do not have a legitimate national identity and that their state is, in essence, a puppet of the West. In other words, he thinks Ukrainians have no agency and are a submissive people.
By invoking the memory of Peter the Great, it also becomes clear that Putin’s intentions are driven by some sense of historical destiny. And Putin’s plan for imperial restoration could, in theory, extend to other territories that once belonged to the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, something that should raise alarm in all countries that emerged from the collapse of the USSR.
Earlier this week, a lawmaker from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party introduced a bill in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, repealing a Soviet resolution recognizing Lithuania’s independence. Lithuania may now be a member of NATO and part of the European Union, but in Putin’s Russia, this kind of neo-colonial stance is the surest display of loyalty to the president.
And that does not bode well for Russia’s future. If there is no account of Russia’s imperial past – whether in Soviet or Tsarist guise – there is less chance that a Russia without Putin will abandon the model of subjugation of its neighbors, or become a more democratic state.
Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously asserted that Russia could part ways with its imperial customs only if it was willing to hand over its claims to Ukraine.
“It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with subjugated and then subjugated Ukraine, Russia automatically becomes an empire,” he wrote in 1994.
Putin, however, is relying on the opposite: for Russia to survive, he argues, it must remain an empire, regardless of human cost.
Source: CNN
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