| Summary/Abstract |
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked Western observers. Seizures of territory, mass expulsions, and all-out assaults on Ukrainian culture hearken back to an earlier, darker era in European history—the era of empire. Indeed, the conflict may be the 21st century’s first imperial war. For President Vladimir Putin and many others in the Russian elite, Ukraine’s underlying provocation lay not so much in its aspiration to join NATO or the European Union, but in the very temerity it displayed in existing at all. Expressing ideas that are widespread among Russian thinkers and politicians, Putin has argued that Ukrainians and Russians are, as he put it in 2014, “one people, a single whole”—and that because he considers Ukraine part of Russia’s own historic patrimony, Moscow retains the right to conquer and reshape it with no regard for its inhabitants.
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