Thanks to the historian Fabrice d’Almeida, the news is put into perspective every Saturday.
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Posted on 10/01/2022 5:29 PM Updated on 10/01/2022 6:40 PM
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While Vladimir Putin has just announced the annexation of new territories in Russia’s favour, a return to the logic of his expansion is imperative.
Putin cares little about legality. Like its predecessors in Russian history, its main argument is strength. That was already the case in 2014, when he annexed Crimea and presented the world with a fait accompli. But he used the same logic as Stalin, who used the 1939 German-Soviet pact to expand at the expense of the Baltic countries and Bessarabia. And he was even inspired by Lenin, who annexed many republics like Ukraine to the USSR in 1922. But Lenin followed in the footsteps of the Tsarist Empire, which since the 18th century expanded mainly east and south, and conquered territories from the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire, and also conquered part of Poland or Finland in the west and north.
In fact, Putin is embracing the old dream of a greater Russia that he learned growing up. It refuses to take into account the new logics that have prevailed in international society, where violence is not enough to legislate.
>> Vladimir Putin’s speech, according to Jean-Louis Bourlanges “an explosion of nationalist delirium”.