Thread by @fascinatorfun

In the 1990s the author of this excellent article was sent to explore “Where is the eastern edge of the Western World now”.

He came across a Russian concept of “near abroad” and a (rhyming in Russian) couplet :-

“A chicken's not really a bird; and Poland's not really abroad."

This sense of entitlement to land beyond its borders and also the erroneous understanding of how the majority who live in those lands feel about their independence, seems to have led Putin (and maybe Russians) into a series of trapdoors.

We have seen some indication that parts of Serbia still favour Russia. But not so the battle scarred Bosnia whose sense of independence hardened through the battle for it.

Ukraine seems to be strengthening their narrative of resistance, suffering and heroic struggle too.

Looking back at Russia’s early efforts to westernise & democratise & its descent into gangster capitalism where a tiny élite became fabulously rich by plundering the assets of major industries, especially oil & gas.

In 1998 Russia defaulted & the rouble crashed also under Putin

People queued for hours at the bank hoping to withdraw dollars or GBP only to watch the rouble drop before their eyes and their life saving vanish.

On a dacha near the border with Ukraine a graduate mining engineer rued the day Stalin’s Russia was lost
Nearly everything they ate that year was grown on his acre of land with the rest bartered
He had not used cash for 18 months.

Ukrainians would disagree with him about Stalin

I did a thread on how Stalin enforced Ukrainian famine- Holodomor- in the 1930s. He called the resisting Ukrainians “Enemies of the State” and “Saboteurs.”

Straight from Stalin to the front pages of the Daily Mail, the S**, the Telegraph and the Express,

Stalin then regarded Ukraine as a Russian frontier land, whereby substance farmers who owned their own land should surrender it to enable the forming of large collectives for the common good of Russia.

In fact “Ukraine” comes from the Russian word for “edge” or periphery

3.9 million Ukrainians starved to death under those Stalin years. Those that survived understandably craved independence.

Putin appears to be making the same error wanting Ukraine brought back into the Russian fold and has overreached himself.

And where is China in all this? It suits Beijing to challenge the the US$ as the reserve currency by carving out a distinct yuan zone as an alternative space in the global economy, more protected from future sanctions.

But it is also a war of democracy v authoritarianism
Yalta v Helsinki
The former where great powers redrew the map of Europe in 1945

The latter springing from the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 which describes a Europe of independent sovereign states free to choose its own alliances