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.”
Precisely why Russian aggression has to be dealt with in Ukraine.
The last two countries to join NATO did so because of Russian aggression in Ukraine.
The last two countries to join NATO did so because of Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Then why bother?
You ain’t US go practice your limited speech at home
Don’t care.
EU: bigger GDP, bigger population than North America. This one is for them to solve.
Why is it considered a Freeper conservative value to support Putin and Russia.
You don’t know anything about Russia. Stick to what you know and stay making it up on the fly from your brainwashed western media head.
No, I don’t remember that prophetic vision. Is it in the Bible? What prophet are you referring to?
Because we are the bad guys.
Zelensky could end what? Do you really understand that Putin doesn’t recognize the Ukrainians as an independent nation? He considers them to be “bad Russians.” Once Ukraine gives up, the Ukrainian nation ceases to exist and purges and forced Russification begin. Yes, it would be genocide by definition (genocide doesn’t have to be physical), but you don’t seem to care.
What has happened to the American conservative movement? Where are the intellectual giants like William Buckley and Frank S. Meyer? I can only see intellectual primitivism, self-centeredness and moral decline.
It’s an eastern orthodox thing and he got it very wrong.
Wrong.
So the Putin Freepers believe that Putin is the savior of Western Europe and the World.
You are full of it. Just free style what you think Putin has said, though he never did, and imagine the future.
Why can’t you just stick to facts?
Keep making it up as you go.
You and your zelensky buddies are completely out of credibility.
That’s what the story is at least.
But you don’t know why they joined nato.
The US is easily capable of talking them into joining and putting some cash into play.
Are you an American?
Why must we have these nonAmericans, you don’t count, constantly here exhibiting russophobia and making up stories?
I am so tired of their intellectual loss and garbage posts.
He is a joke. I loved the falling eyebrow.
I had forgotten about the eyebrows
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