Is Putin a Madman Bent on the Expansion of Russian Empire and World Russia?

Executive Summary

  • Many articles that claim the entirety of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has zero to do with US provocation and is entirely due to Russian desires to expand.
  • This article analyzes one of these articles.

Introduction

This article analyzes an article titled ‘Russkiy mir’: What Putin’s worldview tells us about the war in Ukraine, the Russian people, and himself.

Quotes from the Article

Concept of the Russian World on Russian Foreign Policy

‘Russkiy mir’: What Putin’s worldview tells us about the war in Ukraine, the Russian people and himself

Putin and his senior advisers have a name for it: “Russkiy mir” — or “Russian world.” It is a concept that predates Putin’s rise to power. But he has aggressively embraced it and made it his own. Among other things, it means that when Putin says “Russia,” he does not mean a state called the Russian Federation within its current boundaries. He means any place where Russians live, where the Russian language is spoken — even by a small minority, any place where the influence of Russia or Russians has been felt.

“The idea of the ‘Russian world,’” said Surkov, “did not come up yesterday. I introduced it into the structure of state policy. Putin said, ‘Russia has no borders’; I think he meant it. What is the Russian world? It is everywhere where people speak and think in Russian. … Where our Putin is respected. And he is respected in many places by those who do not speak Russian and who have a rather vague idea about Russia. Where people are afraid of Russian weapons, this is also the Russian world. This is our [sphere of] influence. Where our scientists, our writers, our art are respected. This is all the Russian world.”

There are several problems with this explanation is the following.

Issue #1: A Non-Unique Concept

This is not unique to consider the international disposal of ethnicity or language as “one group.” The Jews think this way in terms of “world Jewry.” The Muslims say the world is filled with 1.6 billion Muslims, and an offense against Mohammed is an offense against everyone. (even though Muslims are not particularly unified in reality). Mexican leaders have made these comments about Mexicans in the US (which is probably a good reason to keep Mexicans out of the US). Furthermore, there is far more evidence that Muslims plan to conquer the entire planet and eliminate the Kafir, evidence in both their behavior and in their documents going back 1300 years than for the Russian World. In fact, the plans of world domination by Russia pales in comparison to the claims made by Islam. However, this author would most likely consider such coverage as “racist and despicable.”

  • This is because it is politically correct to make up or exaggerate false evidence about Russia on any dimension.
  • At the same time, these same authors will suppress far more compelling evidence on Islam. Actually, this extends to many religions that propose that all of those not of the proper denomination will burn in hell for eternity. Yet, I don’t see this brought up in the popular media.

Therefore, as this is a constant perception proposed by many groups, it might be good if the author explained this rather than making it appear as if it is unique to Russia, and in fact, any Russian chauvinism is a drop in the bucket compared to that of Jews, Muslims, and many other groups who are part of “protected groups.”

Issue #2: Putin’s Military History

There are a large number of Russians and Russian speakers throughout Eastern Europe. Why hasn’t Putin been attacking those other countries?

Is there something particular about Ukraine?

It turns out there is, and the author does not bring this to the reader’s attention, and he does not do so because it would undermine the argument he is presenting. I will discuss this item further in the article.

However, the author makes a giant leap to the following conclusion in the following quote.

Evidence of The Russian World Concept Being No Holds Barred?

In one sense, Russkiy mir is a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners view of the non-Russian world. In another, it’s an updated version of the communist mantra, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” — the flagship of which was the Soviet Union.

Where in the quotes was it stated that it is a no holds barred, take no prisoners view? This author is inserting this interpretation and overlaying it upon the basic concept.

The author’s next mistake is saying it is an updated version of the communist mantra. However, Putin is not a communist, and neither is Russia. So again, this is another leap to a conclusion that does not fit with the facts, but with the fiction, the author is constructing. (no, I refuse to use the word “narrative.” And he continues this exaggeration in the following quote.

This expansionist ideology offers a clear justification for sending soldiers into Ukraine — where some Russians live, where Russian is spoken, where Russian culture is present. All the ingredients, in other words, for a Russian world.

Well, the expansionist ideology proposal is not supported by Putin’s behavior, which, unfortunately for this author, we have extensive history on. Under Putin/Dmitry Medvedev’s rule (Medvedev was a Putin puppet), the have been few wars. One was against the Chechens, which did not lead to expansion, Georgia, which threatened to join NATO, and small amounts of territory to Russia in a war with a few hundred casualties. And Crimea, which did lead to expansion and was driven by the 2013 coup instituted by the US government. Other wars, like in Syria, are responses to US foreign intervention to overturn Russian-friendly regimes and have nothing to do with expanding the Russian state.

Putin or Medvedev has been in power for 20 years, yet he has no history of using wars to expand the Russian state outside of Ukraine and Georgia — both of which were due to US provocations — the detailed reasons I will discuss in a minute. If Putin is so dedicated to developing the Russian state, why does he have such a poor record of actually doing it?

Observe the author’s interpretation of Russian support for the Russian World.

The list is long. Putin would tell you it’s simple: It’s all about protecting the Russkiy mir.

Really? Is it long? How would the number and scale of these wars compare against US wars in the past twenty years? Which wars have more civilian casualties? Which wars were better supported by evidence of a threat to the country that carried them out?

It is now beyond contention that Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria — all US/NATO waged wars based on false claims. These claims of threat were far less accurate than the claims made by Russia. Inaccurate interpretation continues in the following quote.

A few days after the start of the current war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it this way: “This is not about Ukraine at all. Or rather, not so much about Ukraine, but about the world legal order. … It reflects the battle over what the world order will look like.”

Put differently: Will it be a Russian world or someone else’s?

No, I don’t agree with that interpretation at all. Lavrov meant that it is about whether we will dominate the world. Recall that Ukraine is on Russia’s border. We are not discussing Mexico and Russia forcing weapons into and performing a coup in Mexico. We are talking about the US forcing weapons and performing a coup in Ukraine.

This author argues that the US and NATO had nothing to do with Russia invading Ukraine and that Russia invaded only because it was intent on attacking any country with a large Russian population and could add to the Russian state. Here is what the author did not discuss and what the author, and the Pentagon/CIA, which could have written the article, do not want anyone to know.

  • The US performed a coup in 2013 to remove the more popularly elected president with a US puppet. This was a coordinated affair between the CIA, Big Tech, and media – over which the CIA/Pentagon had enormous control.
  • Due to the coup, the Russians living in the Dombass who found their votes were eliminated by the US coup rebelled, and in response, the Kyiv government has been bombing the area leading to roughly 14,000 casualties.
  • The US was funding 46 bioweapons labs in Ukraine.
  • The US had been providing military training to Ukrainian armed services.
  • The US had been infusing weapons into Ukraine.
  • As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, the US pushed Germany to cancel the Nordstream 2 pipeline, which will mean purchasing more gas from the US. The US has wanted this pipeline canceled for years and has as a long-term policy goal to isolate Russia from Europe. The US has a long-term policy goal to ruin Russian society. A significant reason for sending weapons to Ukraine is not to help the Ukrainians win but to kill as many Russians as possible, no matter the Ukrainian casualties. The point is to sacrifice Ukraine for larger US policy objectives and provide another war for US war contractors.
  • The US proposed “fake adding” Ukraine to NATO. Ukraine would not be added, but the idea was to promote the concept as a way to encourage a reaction from Russia. Hopefully, attack Ukraine. They did this because they knew that adding Ukraine to NATO was Russia’s “line in the sand.”

This final point is explained in the following video.

Videos That Are Not Approved by the Pentagon’s Media Office

The following video is another video the CIA/Pentagon does not want anyone to watch.

This video is 1.25 hours long. So the US can rely on not that many people watching it. Mearsheimer states that what the US is doing in Ukraine will result in Ukraine getting wrecked as a country. This video was recorded in 2015. 

Conclusion

The question should be asked, would the US allow Russia to do in Mexico what the US did in Ukraine?

We don’t need to rely on the “Russian World” hypothesis if the answer is no.

This article is a lie by the author because it pretends that the US never did anything in Ukraine. The author also leaves out that NATO has been encircling Russia for decades and that 30 countries have not been added as I cover in the article How NATO is Constantly Adding Members Countries and Aggravating Russia.

After the end of the Cold War, NATO should have been disbanded. What NATO is doing, and as Putin has pointed out repeatedly to pushing for war. NATO bombed Libya. There were two major reasons for this. France was promised oil concessions and Hillary Clinton planned to run on killing Ghaddafi.

NATO is an arm of US foreign policy, and is pushing for wars. NATO now effectively reflects the desires of US war contractors, and war contractors require continual war. The objective is to push NATO to be a $2 trillion war. This is the cost of each of the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq. Both wars were disasters that did zero for US national security and were giveaways to the US war contractors. What lies ahead for the US in eternal war. There will always be another evil person that requires a subsidy of $2 trillion to depose. The war in Afghanistan ended not that long ago, and very soon after, the US had another war, it was sponsoring. This does not account for numerous other dirty wars engaged in by the US around the world.

In 2012 Obama ended the law that prevented the US government from paying for propaganda inside the US. Nearly all establishment media is controlled by the CIA/Pentagon regarding foreign policy. This looks like an article paid for by the CIA/Pentagon to increase the support for the war.