Show Navigation
Conversation
Notices
-
A year ago, the writer said that "Putin's 'Russian World' was falling apart because of his multi-year attack against Ukraine:{https://nu.federati.net/url/285227}.
> Ukraine’s geopolitical turn away from Russia enjoys overwhelming public backing. Indeed, with Ukrainian opinion polls consistently indicating majority support for future membership of both the European Union and NATO, it is difficult to imagine any way back for Russia. Instead, Vladimir Putin looks destined to enter the Russian history books as the man who lost Ukraine.
> The loss of Ukraine is a crushing blow to Putin’s dreams of imperial revival and his obsession with reversing the humiliations of the Soviet collapse. It also represents a resounding defeat for the “Russian World” doctrine that has served as the unofficial ideology of the Putin regime for more than a decade.
> Putin’s commitment to a so-called “Russian World” that extends beyond the borders of modern Russia first began to take shape in the mid-2000s and gained considerable momentum following Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia.
> According to Putin and other prominent advocates, the “Russian World” encompasses populations throughout the former Czarist and Soviet empires who are bound together with Russia by the Russian language along with a common religion, culture, history, and world view.
> Ukraine lies at the very heart of Putin’s “Russian World” and is central to his imperial ambitions. Nor is he alone in such thinking. Indeed, widespread assumptions regarding Ukraine’s natural place within the “Russian World” played a crucial role in Moscow’s decision to invade the country in 2014. This deep-rooted belief has since helped to maintain high levels of Russian public support for the separatist republics created and maintained by the Kremlin in eastern Ukraine.
> Putin and fellow “Russian World” devotees such as Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill believe Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all part of the same “Russian civilization” and share common ancestral origins in the medieval Kyiv Rus, which is depicted as “the first Russian state.” They view today’s separation into individual post-Soviet states as a mistake of history and blame the West for artificially dividing the “Russian World.”
> This Russian narrative dismisses Ukraine’s centuries of struggle for statehood as a betrayal of Russian-Ukrainian “brotherhood.” Ukrainian leaders ranging from eighteenth century Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa to modern-day presidents Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are portrayed as traitors and separatists collaborating with Western enemies of Russia in order to divide and weaken the “Russian World.”
> In reality, the “Russian World” ideology promoted by the Putin regime has been out of touch with Ukrainian public opinion for many years. This gap has widened significantly as attitudes have hardened in response to the undeclared and ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.
While I think it is obvious that the writer is biased toward #Ukraine and against #Russia, the widespread and strong resistance to this year's invasion indicates that the writer is not entirely wrong.
-
@adcock Of course there are geopolitics involved. But there is also the history of oppressing their fellow Slavs and other neighboring peoples, trying to subsume them into a greater Russia and a Russian empire.
After the USSR broke up in the 1990s, all the countries who had been gobbled up were freed. Meanwhile, many of them, including Russia, went through a terrible time of political and economic and social restructuring.
Part of Putin's appeal is that he has a strong grip, keeping things from falling further. And that he openly desires to bring back a strong, Russian-led empire covering at least the lands formerly in the USSR. He wants to 'make Russia great again' and bring back the days when the entire world quaked in fear of their nation.
-
@adcock And that means all nations within the old USSR's footprint are targets for reconquest.
Yes, he doesn't want NATO missiles in Ukraine, right next to the Russian border, just as Kennedy did not want Soviet missiles in Cuba, right next to the US. But his major motivation is to rebuild the empire.
-
@adcock The other thing to keep in mind is that European nations that are in NATO are not going to go along with attacking Russia. Whatever one may think about the US, everyone knows European countries do not want war and will not fight short of an invasion on NATO soil. So having European troops and weapons in UA actually makes RU safer.
If Putin wasn't trying to retake UA, he would have thought about this and demanded only that US troops not go there.
-
@adcock If any nation doesn't take other countries' benevolence into account, they would be randomly attacking some other nation on a weekly basis.
Seriously, though, no one is so powerful that a coalition of all other nations couldn't take them down. Nations rely on most other nations to avoid military conflicts as part of their policies.
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}
All Arkwood Pond Social content and data are available under the