So Putin sees himself not as an imperialist, but as the Abe Lincoln of greater Russia.
Yes - and Putin evidently believes that the reintegration into the new Soviet Union somehow “frees” the people of Ukraine. No, it only soothes the pain felt by the Russian elites about losing Ukraine.
Indeed. The end goal of this invasion is the creation of the NewSSR.
Uniting Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and perhaps some of the Stans into a new country under Putin’s control.
“So Putin sees himself not as an imperialist, but as the Abe Lincoln of greater Russia.”
I take Putin’s statement about the Soviet breakup being the worst thing that has happened in recent world history as telling the tale in a nutshell. He wants to rebuild the USSR.
Including using his troops as cannon fodder?
“Putin sees himself not as an imperialist, but as the Abe Lincoln of greater Russia.”
If he is terminal, health wise, future actions on his orders might be very scary for a lot of the world, including us.
From the article, I get the impression Putin is trying to do for Russia what Justinian I tried to for the Roman/Byzantine Empire—restore the borders and glory of the old Empire.
More along the lines of old czarist schema holding out it’s nationalist structure vs. the NWO commercialism that nearly every other modern country has fallen into.
Putin fights the inevitable assimilation, with archaic Quixotian rhetoric. He’s old, probably sick, and his time is fading quickly away. This is likely his last hurrah.