At least one Russian has come right out and said it out loud,
They are about restoring the tsar-like Russ empire. He says going back 800 years worth.
That’s a fairly consistent or at least recurring theme in Russia’s national psyche since the late Romanov days. Kind of like how we hearken back to the Founding Fathers, they’re very fond of the Kievan Rus as their origin story.
And also not by accident that represents just about the historical high water mark of the extent of Russian-controlled lands in Europe.
It’s always amazing to me to notice that whenever somebody gets an expansionist bee under their bonnet, the “correct” historical period to demarcate “naturally ours” from “naturally not ours” always turns out to be whenever “ours” was biggest. And sometimes we even have to pick different centuries to get the highest high water marks in all directions. But it’s always “all ours” thereafter.
Odd that.
Were they ever shy about this? Putin has always openly embraced Russkiy Mir. I’m pretty ignorant about this stuff, but it sounds like more-or-less the same thing?
And, of course “mir” also means “peace”. Kind of reminds me of when Bush I said “a new world order”, my cousin translated that to “just do like we say and nobody gets hurt.”
Yeah. There are several nations that equate “world peace” with “We are the only big power on a planet of pipsqueaks we either own or control.”
As my dad’s favorite dad joke goes (it works better orally):
“I want peace! A piece of Ukraine, a piece of Poland, a piece of Estonia…”
Someone should tell this guy that Russia has no business building an empire when it can’t even reach Kyiv after 19 months of fighting.
I’ve thought this for some time. But are they going to go back to the borders they had 800 years ago. I think not.
That would be when Rus’ was ruled from Kyiv, correct?
Russia has done a great job of managing the external narrative of “we just need to feel safe by dominating all the countries around us”, while internally progressing the narrative “it’s all ours, it was always ours, we’re going to get it back and then Western Europe will be the new buffer.”
The West (collectively) could have understood all this at any time by picking up some books and reading them. Russia’s imperial aims are woven into its literary foundations. But it was more politically and economically expedient to treat the USSR/Russia just as a very powerful rival with different views on politics and economy.
So we had this huge advantage given to us on a silver platter by an idiot US President who stumbled upon the only workable solution to dealing with Russia (Reagan acting like an unhinged fucking maniac ready to unleash hell), and instead of capitalizing on Russia’s demise, the next 3 Presidents squandered the advantage by triangulating around stupid strategies to bribe Russia into compliance with pallets of jeans and Coca-Cola. (Then, of course, Trump, who was Russia’s greatest victory in history).
So yeah, Russia’s aims have always been out in the open. The only reason anyone’s confused and surprised is that we’ve done our utmost to pretend they were something else, something easily fixed by airdrops of jeans and DVD players.
Then there was the Pax Romana, or as Tacitus put it: “They make a desert and call it peace.”
Most of the US foreign policy punditocracy has been all over this from the demise of the Soviet Union. And some large fraction of DoS as well.
America has always placed economic (read “commercial”) interests ahead of governmental ones. Whether selling guns to the Native Americans, or trying to open first Russia then China to US commerce in hopes of our government getting them on the cheap while our commerce robbed them blind, it’s a long and sordid string of gunshot wounds to our own feet.
Correct.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Eight hundred years ago, Russia was much smaller than its present size. So “restoring” Russia to it 1223 borders would involve giving away the majority of Russian territory.
The European part of Russia is what matters in this Russkiy Mir effort. Yes, current Russia is huge because of all the landmass in Asia.
But all the money, and all the ethnically Slavic-or-similar people are all to Russia’s west today. And that is the land, industry, and populace that Putin and the other Russian nationalists both great and small wish to “reclaim” as their own nation’s birthright. Historical facts and the current populace’s wishes be damned.
and the Mongols hordes are coming for 2041…
Yes but those lands to the west were not controlled by Russia eight hundred years ago. Why would Sergey Mardan cite as the ideal a period when Russia was smaller in order to justify seeking to make Russia larger? This would be like an American saying they want to expand America to the borders we had in 1776.
Exactly so. So I don’t think this is quite what they mean. I think they want Soviet era borders.
Russia was just one tiny republic under the Soviet Union. You are thinking of the Empire:
Well, let’s hope it doesn’t strike back.