ANALYSIS: Studying Russian President Vladimir Putin's thoughts is never an easy activity, however occasionally the Kremlin chief makes it simple.
Such was the case on Thursday, when Putin met with a bunch of younger Russian entrepreneurs. Anybody searching for clues as to what Putin's endgame for Ukraine is perhaps ought to learn the transcript, helpfully launched right here in English.
Putin's phrases converse for themselves: What he's aiming for in Ukraine is the restoration of Russia as an imperial energy.
Many observers shortly picked up on one in every of Putin's extra provocative traces, through which he in contrast himself to Peter the Nice, Russia's modernising tsar and the founding father of St Petersburg - Putin's personal birthplace - who got here to energy within the late seventeenth century.
"Peter the Nice waged the Nice Northern Battle for 21 years," a relaxed and apparently self-satisfied Putin mentioned. "On the face of it, he was at battle with Sweden taking one thing away from it... He was not taking away something, he was returning. That is the way it was."
It did not matter that European nations did not recognise Peter the Nice's seizure of territory by drive, Putin added.
"When he based the brand new capital, not one of the European nations recognised this territory as a part of Russia; everybody recognised it as a part of Sweden," Putin mentioned. "Nevertheless, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there together with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was below Russia's management. The identical is true of the western path, Narva and his first campaigns. Why would he go there? He was returning and reinforcing, that's what he was doing."
Alluding on to his personal invasion of Ukraine, Putin added: "Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as effectively."
These remarks have been swiftly condemned by Ukrainians, who noticed them as a unadorned admission of Putin's imperial ambitions.
"Putin's confession of land seizures and evaluating himself with Peter the Nice show: there was no 'battle,' solely the nation's bloody seizure below contrived pretexts of individuals's genocide," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak mentioned on Twitter. "We must always not discuss 'saving [Russia's] face,' however about its quick de-imperialisation."
There's so much to unpack right here, by way of each historical past and present affairs. Podolyak was alluding to speak in worldwide capitals about providing Putin a face-saving option to de-escalate or halt the combating in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron has led that cost, saying final weekend that the world "should not humiliate Russia" within the seek for a diplomatic decision.
These arguments could have appeared extra affordable earlier than February 24. Within the run-up to the invasion, Putin laid out a collection of grievances to make the case for battle, from NATO's eastward growth to Western supply of army help to Ukraine.
However learn the transcript of Putin's remarks on Thursday extra intently, and the facade of rational geopolitical bargaining falls away.
"With the intention to declare some sort of management - I'm not even speaking about world management, I imply management in any space - any nation, any individuals, any ethnic group ought to guarantee their sovereignty," Putin mentioned. "As a result of there isn't a in-between, no intermediate state: both a rustic is sovereign, or it's a colony, it doesn't matter what the colonies are known as."
In different phrases, there are two classes of state: The sovereign and the conquered. In Putin's imperial view, Ukraine ought to fall into the latter class.
Putin has lengthy argued that Ukrainians do not need a legit nationwide id and that their state is, basically, a puppet of the West. In different phrases, he thinks Ukrainians don't have any company and are a topic individuals.
By summoning the reminiscence of Peter the Nice, it additionally turns into clear that Putin's goals are pushed by some sense of historic future. And Putin's challenge of imperial restoration may - in principle - lengthen to different territories that when belonged to the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, one thing that ought to increase alarms in all of the nations that emerged from the collapse of the USSR.
Earlier this week, a deputy from the pro-Kremlin United Russia occasion submitted a draft regulation to the State Duma, Russia's decrease home of parliament, abolishing a Soviet decision recognising the independence of Lithuania. Lithuania could now be a NATO member and a part of the European Union, however in Putin's Russia, that sort of neo-colonial posturing is the surest show of loyalty to the president.
And that doesn't bode effectively for Russia's future. If there isn't a reckoning with Russia's imperial previous - whether or not in Soviet or tsarist guise - there may be much less likelihood that a Russia with out Putin would abandon a sample of subjugating its neighbours, or grow to be a extra democratic state.
Former US nationwide safety adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously asserted that Russia may solely half methods with its imperial habits if it have been prepared to give up its claims to Ukraine.
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"It can't be careworn strongly sufficient that with out Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, however with Ukraine suborned after which subordinated, Russia mechanically turns into an empire," he wrote in 1994.
Putin, nevertheless, is relying on one thing of the alternative: For Russia to outlive, he argues, it should stay an empire, whatever the human value.