Putin’s words speak for themselves: What is aimed at Ukraine is the restoration of Russia as an imperial power.
Many observers quickly followed 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 own birthplace – who came to power in late 17th century. “Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years,” said a relaxed and apparently complacent Putin. “Obviously, she was at war with Sweden taking something away from her … She was not taking anything, she was coming back. That’s how it was.”
It did not matter that European countries did not recognize the violent occupation of territories by Peter the Great, Putin added. “When it founded the new capital, none of the European countries recognized this territory as part of Russia; everyone recognized it as part of Sweden,” Putin said. “However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there with the Finno-Hungarian people and this territory was under Russian control. The same goes for the western direction, Narva and his first campaigns. Why go there? “He was coming back and strengthening, that’s what he did.” Referring directly to his own invasion of Ukraine, Putin added: “Clearly, it was up to us to return and strengthen as well.” These remarks were immediately condemned by the Ukrainians, who saw them as a naked admission of Putin’s imperial ambitions.
“Putin’s confession of land confiscation and comparison of himself with Peter the Great prove: there was no ‘conflict’, only the bloody occupation of the country under fabricated pretexts of genocide,” the president’s adviser wrote on Twitter. of Ukraine, Mikhail Pontolyak. We should not talk about “savings”. [Russia’s] person “, but for its immediate de-imperialization”. There is a lot to unpack here, both in terms of history and topicality. Podolyak hints that he was speaking to international capitals to offer Putin a way to save face in order to de-escalate or stop the fighting in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron led the charge, saying last weekend that people “should not humiliate Russia” in the search for a diplomatic solution. These arguments may have seemed more reasonable before February 24th. Prior to the invasion, Putin had voiced a number of grievances in support of the war, from extending NATO eastward to providing military assistance from the West to Ukraine. But read Putin’s recording more carefully on Thursday, and the front of rational geopolitical negotiation is falling apart.
“In order to claim some kind of leadership – I’m not even talking about world leadership, I mean leadership in any field – any country, any people, any national group must secure their sovereignty,” Putin said. “Because there is no intermediate, intermediate state: either a country is sovereign or it is a colony, regardless of what the colonies are called.” In other words, there are two categories of state: the sovereign and the conquered. According to Putin’s imperial view, Ukraine should belong to 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 believes that Ukrainians do not have an agency and are subject people. At the invitation of the memory of Peter the Great, it also becomes clear that Putin’s goals are driven by a sense of historical destiny. And Putin’s imperial restoration project could – in theory – be extended to other territories that once belonged to the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, which would sound the alarm in all the countries that emerged from the collapse of the USSR. Earlier this week, a Kremlin-backed United Russia lawmaker submitted a bill to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian 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 show 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 Soviet or tsarist – Russia is less likely without Putin abandoning a plan to subjugate its neighbors or become a more democratic state.
Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously claimed that Russia could part ways with its imperial habits 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 Ukraine subjugated and then subjugated, Russia automatically becomes an empire,” he wrote in 1994. Putin, however, counts on the opposite: In order for Russia to survive, he argues, it must remain an empire, regardless of human cost.