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Ukraine: Russian news site describes Putin’s fantasies of the Greater Russian Empire

An article on ria.ru, posted online only briefly, perhaps even inadvertently, shows what Putin is all about with Ukraine

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The Russian propaganda machine does not have to warm up, it runs. Sometimes it even jumps the gun a bit.

Yesterday, Saturday, ria.ru has put online a kind of jubilant article for the victory over Ukraine. Premature. Too early. Only very briefly. But long enough for it to be archived at archive.org.

If one reads the article, then the totality of what Putin is concerned with in this war in Ukraine becomes visible: the restoration of the Greater Russian Empire. All other things, NATO, Ukraine’s turn to the West, national security, all this is pretended, only the “second most important” reason. It is about overcoming the Russian partition complex.

An excerpt? Sure! An excerpt with machine translation by Deepl.

Russia is in the process of restoring its unity – the tragedy of 1991, that terrible catastrophe of our history, its unnatural rift, has been overcome. Yes, at great cost, yes, through the tragic events of the current civil war, because now there are still brothers shooting at each other, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies – but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia. Russia is restoring its historical wholeness by bringing together the Russian world, the Russian people in their entirety of Great Russians, White Russians and Little Russians. If we were to abandon this, if we were to allow the temporary division to drag on for centuries, we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors, but also be condemned by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land.

Vladimir Putin has – without any exaggeration – assumed a historic responsibility by choosing not to leave the Ukrainian issue to future generations. After all, the need to solve this problem would always remain a major problem for Russia, for two main reasons. And the issue of national security, i.e. making Ukraine an anti-Russia and an outpost for the West’s pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.

The first would always be the complex of a divided nation, the complex of national humiliation – when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev) and then had to come to terms with the existence of two states that were no longer one, but two peoples. That is, either to give up their history and agree to the crazy versions that “only Ukraine is the real Russia”, or helplessly gnash their teeth and remember the times when “we lost Ukraine”. The repatriation of Ukraine, i.e. giving it back to Russia, would become more difficult with each passing decade – the recoding, derussification of Russians and attitudes against Russian Little Russians-Ukrainians would gain momentum. And if the full geopolitical and military control of Ukraine by the West solidified, its return to Russia would become impossible – it would be at war with the Atlantic bloc.

Now this problem is gone – Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be dissolved, but it will be reorganized, restored and returned to its natural state of a part of the Russian world. On what borders, in what form will the alliance with Russia be fixed (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the union state of Russia and Belarus )? This will be decided after the end of Ukraine goes down in history as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of division of the Russian people is coming to an end.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20220226/rossiya-1775162336.html

The “tragedy of 1991” means the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine, this war is only a civil war in which the West should not interfere?

All those who stand by Putin because he sees his country oh so surrounded by NATO should keep these words in mind. Putin will not stop until Great Russians, White Russians and Little Russians are united. Because yes, it is a comment in a media. But yes, it pretty much captures what Putin insiders have been saying for some time.

The article is not online at ria.ru, it is available via archive.org, version as of 02/26/2022 08:00, updated 08:01.

Incidentally, author Petr Akopov speaks “of the distorted view of American elites” and that “Putin’s new presidency will be a time of change, the dimension of which will surpass anything he has done before.”

What is RIA?

RIA Novosti was one of the largest state news agencies in Russia and the former Soviet Union. It emerged from the Soviet Information Bureau in 1961 and was based in Moscow. Beginning in late 2013, RIA Novosti was transferred to the new state-owned Rossiya Sevodnya as part of a three-month restructuring alongside the foreign radio station Voice of Russia.

Since the end of 2014, RIA’s former German website has forwarded to the newly founded news portal Sputnik. The Russian website continues to operate under its own name.