Thread by @Bianca_bibi1204

Behind Putin's war is also an ancient Russian inferiority complex
What's behind it? A good analysis by @UmlandAndreas

(1/21)

#BibisBlog
#RussianWarCrimes



Read more here 👇🏻bibisukraineblog.blogspot.com/2023/07/russla…

Despite the deep desire for peace, Ukrainians reject
reject negotiations with Russia, because a look at the past shows that a stable peace agreement with Russia is not possible in the long run without real security guarantees.

(2/21)

Why, then, is Kyiv not at the forefront of the search for a compromise with Moscow?
But if we take a closer look, from the Ukrainian point of view, Russia's current war against Ukraine is both too typical and too exceptional to be ended simply by negotiations.

(3/21)

What is typical about Russia's war is that it fits into a long historical and broad regional pattern of Russian behavior in its border areas. The extraordinary thing about Russia's war is that it is not just about Ukrainian territory.

(4/21)

Oddly enough, from Moscow's perspective, Ukraine is also about Russian identity.

The current Russian war is not Moscow's first attack on the Ukrainian nation, nor is it the Kremlin's only current expansionist operation in Russia's former empire.

(5/21)

What about the illegal occupation of #Crimea?

As long as the Russian state exists in its current state, according to Ukrainian historical experience and comparative analysis, it will not conduct honest negotiations and sign a permanent peace agreement.

(6/21)

We only need to remember the #Minsk l+ll agreement. What happened only 2 days after the signing?

Ukrainians and other peoples who used to be subject to Russian empires
- the Muscovite, Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet - have experienced similar assaults with sometimes

(7/21)

similar justifications.

Russia's current aggression is the latest manifestation of centuries-old colonial policy and imperial expansion by Moscow. For example,almost exactly thirty years before the escalation in Ukraine,in 1992,the 14th Russian Army intervened militarily

(8/21)

in an internal Moldovan conflict.

The commander of the then 14th Army, Russia's legendary and now deceased General Aleksandr Lebed, justified the illegal intervention of his troops in a foreign country with a claim that preempted Putin's 2022 lie.

(9/21)

Lebed told a press conference in 1992 that the new government of the young Republic of Moldova in Chisinäu was behaving worse than the German SS men 50 years earlier. Heavily armed remnants of the 14th Russian Army,the so-called Operative Group of the Russian Federation,

(10/21)

are still on Moldova's territory, which is also recognized by Moscow, as uninvited guests.

Despite the Russian promise of withdrawal and Moldovan neutrality status that has been in effect since then, Moscow's unwanted troop deployment and state division of Moldova

(11/21)

continues to this day.

This Moldovan episode of 1992-94 illustrates a larger issue. It does not matter - at least from a Central Eastern European perspective-whether Putin is in power in the future or not. It is also irrelevant whether the Russian regime is democratic,

(12/21)

totalitarian, monarchical, oligarchical, or whatever:

Moscow's expansionism is likely to continue. Russia's colonialism and expansionism has been repeatedly demonstrated to the peoples of East-Central Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia in dozens of often bloody

(13/21)

incursions in different historical periods.

In the pre-2022 period, Russian so-called "special operations" (spezoperazazii) or "purges" (satzhistki) often suppressed, sometimes even wiped out, local groups striving for independence.

(14/21)

There, the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is the latest manifestation of a longer and broader trend. Such historical memories are not unique to Ukraine, but can be found throughout the post-communist world.

(15/21)

To be sure, Putin & Co. or their successors might engage in political dialogue and sham-constructive negotiations. However, such behavior by Russia - a widespread suspicion in the post-Soviet world - would serve only instrumental purposes.

(16/21)

It would be a temporary tactical retreat for military regrouping and rearmament.

As far as Ukraine is concerned, Russian aggressiveness is particularly virulent and uncompromising.

(17/21)

Most of mainstream Russian nationalism does not recognize Ukrainian identity and culture as truly and independently national. This apparent disregard has its roots not only, and not so much, in Moscow's arrogance.

(18/21)

Rather, it is an expression of a Russian inferiority complex towards the Ukrainians as the older, more Christian-Orthodox, more clearly defined and unequivocally European East Slavic "brother nation".

(19/21)

According to a large part of the Russian elite and population, Ukrainian nationalism and Ukrainian statehood have no right to exist Their mere tolerance is blasphemy The Ukrainian territories, with the partial exception of western Ukraine, are "small" or "New Russian*"

(20/21)

territory, in Russian "Malorossiya" and "Novorossiya", to prepare the Russian army, economy and population for a later attack, a peace agreement today would be potentially self-destructive and would have far-reaching consequences for Ukraine and Europe.

(21/21)