As Putin has just recognized the independence of two Ukrainian regions and sent troops to bolster Russian-backed separatists. The West is outraged by Putin’s current aggression, as well as by the logic for his seemingly inevitable full-scale invasion.
, to later become part of the Russian empire — and, later still, of the Soviet Union. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Ukraine and the other Soviet republics became independent — a split that Russians saw, not without cause, as a rebuke.Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis said in 1991
, as his nation pulled away from the Soviet Union and into Europe’s embrace. Native languages replaced Russian in government institutions and schools. At the same time, Russians who continued to live in the now independent nations worried that they would be punished for the cruel excesses of the Soviet regime.reports of violent persecution of Russians by Ukrainians
. The Kremlin’s savvy propagandists understand that those reports — which are exaggerated, outdated or simply untrue — play on incipient Russian anxieties about the resentment directed toward them by former subjects in Ukraine and elsewhere. More important, Putin has continued to reference the same sentiment he voiced to Bush in 2008: that Ukraine is a region of Russia that has no claim to independence. “Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia,” Putin said earlier this week. The sentiment
, but it does hold an almost mystical appeal for Russians who see their nation as no less a regional beacon — albeit in profoundly different ways — than does the United States.Nothing unites Russians like memories of World War II. Every child growing up in Russia was inculcated with legends about the heroic defeat of Hitler, a victory that permeated every aspect of Soviet culture — and of Soviet psychology.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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