The imaginary Russian world of Vladimir Putin

The Russian world, those territories where ethnic Russians live and, more importantly, Pushkin’s language is spoken, is the perfect excuse for the Kremlin’s new imperialist ideology, against which international law seems defenseless.

“The idea is not so much to restore the Soviet Union as the old tsarist empire. Therefore, no country is safe from the ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” said Vladimir Fesenko, a Ukrainian political scientist.

Recognition of the independence of Ukraine’s breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk is just the latest example of a strategy that began as soon as Putin came to power in 2000.

history as a weapon

Before signing the agreements with the two breakaway regions of Ukraine on Monday night in the Kremlin, Putin took advantage of the television intervention to give a long history lesson on the Russian world (Russki Mir).

He went back to the times of Catherine the Great in the 18th century to explain that the territory of present-day Ukraine includes historically Russian areas, referring to the entire southeast of the country.

“He forgot to say that the first Slavic state was Kievan Rus’ (IX-XII), that Prince Vladimir was baptized then in Crimea, and that Muscovy did not emerge until the 15th century,” Vlad said in downtown Kiev.

Putin even called the neighboring country “Ukraine named after Lenin”, alluding to the fact that it was the founder of the USSR who created the current Ukrainian state with his own hands, to which the Crimean peninsula was added in 1954, another “gift”. from the Kremlin to Kiev.

Putin prohibits by law any deviation from the official historiography on events such as the Great Patriotic War, but promotes the revision of events such as the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

The former German chancellor, Angela Merkel, assured after the crisis over the annexation of Crimea that Putin lives “far from reality”, in his private world. In fact, he lives in the Russian world, where restoring historical justice is a dogma of faith.

The call of the blood

Recently, the writer and author of the History of the Russian State, Boris Akunin, commented that the origin of today’s Russia is the Mongolian Golden Horde, which translates into the monopolization of power in the hands of a Great Khan and the impossibility of a rule of law.

Since a majority of the population of eastern Ukraine speaks Russian, then, according to Putinist reasoning, Russia has a right to claim such territories as its zone of influence or backyard.

“The most dangerous thing is not the recognition of the separatists, but that, de facto, Putin announced the right to use force to defend the Russians in all corners of the world where their language is spoken,” Fesenko stressed.

Putin claimed the right to defend ethnic Russians “even in other countries.”

The call of the blood

Recently, the writer and author of the History of the Russian State, Boris Akunin, commented that the origin of today’s Russia is the Mongolian Golden Horde, which translates into the monopolization of power in the hands of a Great Khan and the impossibility of a rule of law.

Since a majority of the population of eastern Ukraine speaks Russian, then, according to Putinist reasoning, Russia has a right to claim such territories as its zone of influence or backyard.

“The most dangerous thing is not the recognition of the separatists, but that, de facto, Putin announced the right to use force to defend the Russians in all corners of the world where their language is spoken,” Fesenko stressed.

Putin claimed the right to defend ethnic Russians “even in other countries.”

Hatred of Ukraine

What worried many Ukrainians most was the “hatred of Ukraine” that seeped through Putin’s speech.

“It was a demonstration of hatred for Ukraine. That is dangerous. I associate him with the democratic revolutions of 2004 and 2014. He cannot understand democratic Ukraine,” he noted.

Both revolutions were successful, which he took as a “personal affront”.

“Putin concluded that Ukraine must be punished. Putin wants to destroy democracy and the Ukrainian state,” he opines.

For this reason, he emphasizes, he chose February 21, the day of the victory of the Maidan eight years ago, to “symbolically” sign the agreement with the pro-Russian separatists.

Next on the list

“Today it is Ukraine. Tomorrow it could be the Baltic countries or Central Asia”, he warns.

Criticism of the treatment of Russian minorities in the former Soviet republics has been going on since 1991, but it was Putin who decided to take matters into his own hands.

Putin often uses the carrot from the Russian passport. This was the case in the Georgian republic of South Ossetia, whose control caused a brief but bloody war with Georgia in 2008.

The Ossetians are not Russians, but they are brothers of the inhabitants of the Russian region of North Ossetia. Ossetia and Abkhazia were recognized as independent.

Residents of the Moldovan Republic of Transnistria, where there are Russian troops and arsenals, also hold Russian Federation passports.

In recent years, Moscow has granted citizenship to more than 700,000 inhabitants of Donetsk and Lugansk, who even voted in the legislative elections last September, almost all in favor of the Kremlin party. That was only the first step.

There is also a significant Russian minority in Kazakhstan, which moved the capital to Nur-Sultan for fear of Russian annexation of the entire north of the Central Asian country.

Russians are also a third of the inhabitants of Latvia and Estonia, while in Lithuania they are around 10%, which is why the Balts have asked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to urgently reinforce the eastern flank.