EDITORIAL: As the G-7 group bares its teeth to warn Russia against incursion into Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin tells the world that that country was once part of the Soviet Union and he dreams of revival of that “historical Russia”. There is the reported buildup of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, but the G-7 is “very much a united voice … that there will be massive consequences for Russia in case of an incursion into Ukraine”. President Putin is said to be “sensitive to the perceived expansion of Western military into ex-Soviet countries, and has demanded that NATO formally scrap a 2008 decision to open its doors to Georgia and Ukraine”. However, it says it has no plan to launch fresh attack on Ukraine. Maybe what he said is only a bluff, as he had been doing in the past. According to the record of his remarks and statement, President Putin’s dream to annex Ukraine and its other former satellite states and revive the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics keeps visiting him. To him, the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”, and on this majority of Russians support him. He had won his election to be the Russian president by winning over the public support by raising the possibility of revival of the USSR. And since then whenever Moscow finds itself confronted by a strategic provocation or President Putin needs votes for his election he talks of reviving the erstwhile Soviet Union that existed from 1922 to 1991. For an outsider that’s all right if what President Putin says about collapse of the Russian empire is for domestic audience and keep intact his popularity. But to the world outside, the Russian leader’s remarks tend to trigger a legitimate apprehension that Russia under Putin is mulling expanding its territory.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021