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Why Putin’s Russia cannot accept its borders
Atlantic Council ^ | August 11th, 2023 | Glenn Chafetz, John Sipher

Posted on 08/11/2023 10:09:13 PM PDT by Cronos

To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”

The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.

Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.

...Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.”

...Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Russia; Ukraine
KEYWORDS: atlanticcouncil; glennchafetz; globalistpropaganda; johnsipher; orseem2win; russia; ukraine
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To: Dat

So, again, if we are so awful, so racist, etc., why don’t you leave ? You’ve already made the argument, so follow through and exit stage left and be done with us “terrible, ugly Americans” !


41 posted on 08/12/2023 1:37:23 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: MarMema
For a while this vacuous jackass was showing off idiotically coloured socks. Now he has moved on to inappropriately coloured shoes.


42 posted on 08/12/2023 1:38:01 AM PDT by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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To: Dat

Yes, and it keeps getting funnier, every. time. I. see. it.

;-D


43 posted on 08/12/2023 1:38:07 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: Right_Wing_Madman

Dat is simply saying that a Weimar Republic is the lesser of two evils when compared to a Third Reich. They are both different types of Leftists but one is more dangerous, more entrenched, and more evil than the other.


44 posted on 08/12/2023 1:38:48 AM PDT by Monterrosa-24 (Saludemos la patria orgullosos)
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To: Reverend Wright

You even hate Jean “I fart for you !” Chretien ?

;-D


45 posted on 08/12/2023 1:39:21 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: Reverend Wright

He has three pink socks. Two on his feet/ankles, and one hanging next to his gooch.


46 posted on 08/12/2023 1:41:28 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Because there are still good people here. And for all our animosity towards eachother, I think we agree on 80% of what is wrong with the world.


47 posted on 08/12/2023 1:42:07 AM PDT by Dat
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To: fieldmarshaldj

especially him !

Actually, I have more respect for Chretien than fake-ass “conservatives” like Mulroney.


48 posted on 08/12/2023 1:43:59 AM PDT by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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To: Monterrosa-24

Weimar made the Nazi Reich possible, if not inevitable. Such as what happens when a society collapses, as ours has.


49 posted on 08/12/2023 1:44:15 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: Monterrosa-24
Dat is simply saying that a Weimar Republic is the lesser of two evils when compared to a Third Reich.

Both were total failures. Weimar lasted 15 years, Third Reich lasted 12 years. Neither are an inspiration to me.

50 posted on 08/12/2023 1:45:08 AM PDT by Right_Wing_Madman
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To: Dat

You and I hashed out this discussion elsewhere, and we didn’t agree on anything. Everything you believe to be so, as in reality, isn’t. But you already said who you want running the show, and nobody Conservative will agree with you.


51 posted on 08/12/2023 1:46:41 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

LOL !

I think we will know more when we find out who the “other person” is at the end of the Trudeau marriage.

The rumor about him in Ottawa from earlier days as an MP was he was known as a “hound on the Hill” with an eye out for attractive young people of both sexes.


52 posted on 08/12/2023 1:47:30 AM PDT by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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To: Reverend Wright

Mulroney and his twat of a successor who served as PM for 5 minutes and wiped out the party to almost the last member. As soon as they slap the “Progressive” label on anything, you know they’re rotten leftists. Fun fact: the “Progressive Party” in America that ran their Presidential candidate in 1948 was a Communist/Soviet stooge, FDR’s second VP, Henry Wallace. They all returned to the Demonrat Party.

They’d hate Russia today since it turned against the Communist (”globalist”) agenda. Like certain FReepers...


53 posted on 08/12/2023 1:51:24 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: Reverend Wright

He’s turning out to be worse than his mother, who may have been the biggest whore in Canada. It’s no wonder the rumors that Fidel is his bio dad have merit (and Justine’s rather disturbing resemblance to him, especially before he grew his Marxian beard to become El Jefe de Cuba).

Remarkable what the two Turd Doughs have done to that formerly great country. Incalculable damage.


54 posted on 08/12/2023 1:55:48 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Yup.

The Labour-Progressives in Canada were the USSR controlled Communists. They were exposed when Gouzenko defected.

One of the only politically useful things I ever did was to add my small assistance to the Reform Party in 1993 when they wiped out the Progressive “Conservatives”.


55 posted on 08/12/2023 1:57:56 AM PDT by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Trudeau 1.0 was the really destructive one who actually changed the trajectory of the country.

Trudeau 2.0 is just stupid like the mother. He’s just riding the wave of leftism + mass immigration started by 1.0.


56 posted on 08/12/2023 2:00:19 AM PDT by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

You support the collapse of society. You cheer the occupation of the Donbas by Mohammedan troops, you cheer the brutal invasion of a Christian country, you cheer an army with traditions of hideous homosexual hazing of new recruits, and you speak of Russia with its highest level abortion rate as a stalwart defender of the faith. Your evil hypocrisy knows no borders just as Putin said Russia knows no borders.

Russia has multitudes of nuclear weapons pointed at America. Russia threatens its neighbors and has already invaded the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine. Russia is ruled by a KGB dictator who has been in power for almost a quarter of a century. And in spite of this you hate the brave Ukrainian soldiers and cheer on Putin’s Mohammedan mercenaries.


57 posted on 08/12/2023 2:01:04 AM PDT by Monterrosa-24 (Saludemos la patria orgullosos)
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To: Cronos

BY that logic, we should never had proxy invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Castro who was aligning with the USSR which caused Cuba to invite the USSR in to set up missiles and nukes near our borders with us embargoing them and threatening war over the issue until they folded and left. That is exactly what kleptocracy Russia, not to be confused with the old USSR which Biden is selling, is doing now to keep NATO and American military personnel and hardware off their border. We would be doing the exact same thing. In fact, been there, done that in Cuba.The empire narrative does not wash in that respect.


58 posted on 08/12/2023 2:02:26 AM PDT by chuckee ( )
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To: Monterrosa-24

Write something original. You trolls write the same garbage, in virtually the same style, with the same personal attacks, ad infinitum. Boring and banal.

You worship Zelensky, you own it. He could end all this right now. He won’t. He prefers his dictatorial powers and murdering his own citizens to the last. Spare me your feigned moral outrage, you stand on quicksand.


59 posted on 08/12/2023 2:05:58 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (America Owes Anita Bryant An Enormous Apology)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

“Remarkable what the two Turd Doughs have done to that formerly great country. Incalculable damage.”


It’s incredible what has happened in my lifetime (born 1964). We still had prayer in schools in the early 1970’s. Some things came later for us.

But that is all gone now. The best indicator for how far we have fallen, the Fall 2021 election. So this was after all the corona nonsense: the lockdowns, the distancing, the masks, the vaxes, the mandates, the firings, churches closed while casinos and strip clubs open... and all the rest of it.

Maxime Bernier and People’s Party were the only ones opposing this stuff - they got 5 percent of the vote.


60 posted on 08/12/2023 2:07:27 AM PDT by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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