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by rasz
1470 days ago
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Except Putin himself calmly explained recently its all bullshit, the Nato expansion, Nazis, harasser Russian population, all lies. Putin is after "lost land and glory" https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-says-ukraine-war-seize... "Putin said on Thursday that the Ukraine invasion is about expanding Russian territory. Before, Putin insisted that Russia was freeing Ukraine from so-called Nazis and preventing genocide. Putin said it was his destiny to "return and reinforce" Russia like Peter the Great did." |
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"Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it… He was not taking away anything, he was returning. This is how it was. The areas around Lake Ladoga, where St Petersburg was founded. When he founded the new capital, none of the European countries recognised this territory as part of Russia; everyone recognised it as part of Sweden. However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia’s control. The same is true of the western direction, Narva and his first campaigns. Why would he go there? He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing.
Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well. And if we operate on the premise that these basic values constitute the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in achieving our goals."
He's obviously speaking by analogy about Ukraine without stating as much, but there's something much more specific he's referencing. This [2] is a map of Ukraine by native language, which is about as close as you can get to ethnicity. After the pro-Russian government in 2014 was overthrown, it's essentially those areas in red that declared their independence and have remained independent since.
[1] - http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/68606
[2] - https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2014/02/world/ukraine-di...