Putin's war will destroy Russia
Whatever happens in Ukraine and in the rest of the world, Russias fate is sealed: A future as dark as its darkest past
VIENNA, Austria (Project Syndicate)A grim old Soviet joke probably rings far too true to Ukrainians today. A Frenchman says, I take the bus to work, but when I travel around Europe, I use my Peugeot. A Russian replies, We, too, have a wonderful system of public transportation, but when we go to Europe, we use a tank.
That joke emerged in 1956, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered tanks into Budapest to crush the anti-Soviet Hungarian Revolution, and reappeared in 1968, when Leonid Brezhnev sent tanks to Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring. But in 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev chose not to send tanks or troops to Germany to preserve the Berlin Wall, the quip seemed set to become a thing of the past.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown us anything, however, it is that we cannot believe the present, and all that matters for Russias future is its past.
For Putin, the past that matters most is the one the dissident author and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exalted: the time when the Slavic peoples were united within the Orthodox Christian kingdom of Kievan Rus. Kyiv formed its heart, making Ukraine central to Putins pan-Slavic vision.
But, for Putin, the Ukraine war is about preserving Russia, not just expanding it. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently made clear, Russias leaders believe that their country is locked in a life-and-death battle to exist on the worlds geopolitical map. That worldview reflects Putins longstanding obsession with works of other Russian emigrant philosophers, such as Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev, who described a struggle for the Eurasian (Russian) soul against the Atlanticists (the West) who would destroy it.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/putins-war-will-destroy-russia-11648757321