I love terms like “historically aligned” which lead me to something I call recentism.
Recentism is a position someone takes to justify their position or actions whereas they go back just far enough in time to do that
Examples people claim that US took territory from Mexico and those territories “rightfully “ belong to them. So these stolen lands belonged to Mexico since the beginning of time, correct? Well no. Mexico and Mexican territories existed because Spain took these lands from the separate indigenous people and created mexico(what language do most “Mexicans” speak? Spanish. Present day Mexico won independence from Spain.
But that is not the end of the story, and just like the “indigenous “ people of what is now the USA, the people and nations Aztec, Incas, Cherokee, Shawnee…. Were warring, invading, killing, enslaving, conquering long before Europeans set foot on these continents.
Recentism allows one to go back to a point say where they controlled a piece of land and say this was our land now give it back, regardless of the fact that they took it from someone, and those folks took it from someone else….
Russia and putins “historical claims” conveniently only go far enough back in time to justify them, recentism.
Don’t the mongols, romans , Persians, Turks, Chinese(claims that should concern Russia) have “historical “ claims as well
Been going on too long but I will end with this. Of all the peoples of the earth today, there is one that can show the longest historical occupation of an area, going back thousands of years and yet their claims to those lands are routinely challenged and that is the Jews of what is now Israel, curious
For example: Claiming that Moscow has a right to annex Crimea has no more legitimacy than the British would have by demanding to annex Bombay because they once had a large naval establishment there.