Somebody needs to give Putin a history lesson: how about me (in my latest CNN column)!
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference last evening:
President Putin’s deeply disturbing speech ... makes clear to the world how he views Ukraine .... as a creation of Russia.... It’s a completely false assertion that ignores history, international law, and the tens of millions of patriotic Ukrainians who are proud citizens of a free and independent Ukraine.
Now, in my latest column for CNN Opinion, drawing in part on my last book, A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen, I've done a deep dive, dissecting Putin's chilling rewrite of the history of Ukraine and Russia….
Somebody needs to give Putin a history lesson
Some excerpts:
Vladimir Putin fancies himself a historian, or certainly a historical figure -- one destined to rewrite or restore history in his own image. Now, with the might of the Russian military machine behind him, he has begun what could turn into as bloody a rampage as any in Russia's historical past.
Monday night, on the cusp of declaring portions of Ukraine as stand-alone "people's republics," he embarked on a rambling, distorted and utterly chilling hour-long rewrite of Russian and Soviet history in a televised speech to his nation.
Above all, it is a frightening insight into the deep thinking of the path Putin would like to follow.....Putin seems to believe it is his mission to recreate the old Soviet Union. And apparently, he intends to start with Ukraine.
If one were to take his speech (translated here by the Kremlin) at face value, it would hardly be surprising that he has done so. Built on fantasy and fabrication, Putin's address manufactured a succession of events that bear little resemblance to the real, rich history of a powerful, independent Ukraine that for centuries dwarfed an independent Russia in importance, even size.
The independent Kievan Rus dates back a thousand years, when the Grand Prince of Kiev, Vladimir the Great, married into the powerful Byzantine Empire, Christianizing his nation and expanding its boundaries to make it the largest in Europe -- more than 800,000 square kilometers, or four times the size of France, and including vast stretches of Russia and Poland....
—US Embassy/Ukraine
Today, Putin is making every effort to accelerate his redrawing of red lines that define the post-breakup Russian Federation into those that comprised the Soviet Union.....
Already, Belarus has effectively become a Russian republic, with its leader Alexander Lukashenko firmly in Putin's thrall. More than 1,000 Russian troops continue to occupy the Transnistria region of Moldova, northwest of Odessa on the Ukrainian frontier. And in January, "peacekeepers" from a Russia-led military alliance moved into Kazakhstan to halt violent demonstrations there against its pro-Russian ruler.....
This is not by any means what the world should want for Donetsk and Luhansk. The concept of these so-called "People's Republics" proclaimed by Putin, as political systems designed to advance the interests of their people, has long been debunked. The free world, at least, cannot in any fashion countenance such a back-to-the-future scenario for any portion of Ukraine.
For full text of my column cum history lesson:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/22/opinions/putin-history-lesson-andelman/index.html