JRL NEWSWATCH: “Why Putin’s Russia cannot accept its borders” – Atlantic Council
“… [I]t is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike … modern Turk[ey] … or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, ‘Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.’ The … narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (‘Kyivan Rus’) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created[,] … self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify … external expansion and internal repression. … [W]hat we think of … as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states … includ[ing] Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow … [Moscow] attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule [about] 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now …. [with] no common language … [or] common administration … and no joint identity. … [C]enturies [passed] before … Muscovy attempted to assert … dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine. …”