“Recall also that Pres Putin declared at the youth Seliger forum that Kazakhstan had never been an independent country in the past.”
Putin keeps confirming what I have said about the former Soviet Union; that it was no more than the communist’s assumption of ALL the attributes of the previous Russian Empire; same game, different players
I have also recently learned that the “Soviet” land grabs in Eastern Europe were not far afield from attitudes of the old Russian Empire; after being reminded that Ukraine was the first homeland of the Russians and Ukraine’s old empire once encompassed a number of its neighbors, including large parts of Poland and Lithuania, until history altered its ascendance and a Poland-Lithuania empire grabbed parts of Ukraine. The old Eastern Europe rivalries and memories remain active in the political soil of Russia.
And just as the Bolsheviks and Communists had their fellow travelers, Putin has his Putinistas. They’re dupes and apologists working up weird sophistries for why Putin’s entitled to bully his neighbors and decide what nation is a nation and what one needs to be brought under his control.