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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He's a traditional values conservative who longs for the Czarist pre-1917 Russian Empire, not the Soviet Union.

So do we keep hearing "he's trying to bring back the Soviet Union"?

Is it just because 1991 is in the living memory while 1917 obviously is not?[/quote]

This post is a joke - he is a traditional war criminal and dictator who murders any viable opposition,

But he reason why rational folk think his illegal invasion was a ruse for restoring empire is because he himself has said so on numerous occasions.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/22/putin-speech-russia-empire-threat-ukraine-moscow

Putin’s speech harked back to Russia’s empire – the threat doesn’t stop at Ukraine
Keir Giles

Moscow is acting with newfound confidence, and with total disregard for European norms. The west’s line of military defence must now be bolstered
Tue 22 Feb 2022 12.22 EST

Vladimir Putin’s lengthy speech justifying the dismemberment of Ukraine said much about him but also contains chilling warnings for the rest of Europe. And European states must heed those warnings if they do not wish to be the next victims of the Russian president’s imperial ambition.
It’s long been known that Putin hankers for a lost age of Russian dominance over its neighbours. Calling the collapse of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” is one of his most-quoted (and most misunderstood) historical judgments.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/22/putin-russian-president-ukraine-speech-western-diplomats-scrambling

Restoration of empire is the endgame for Russia's Vladimir Putin
Analysis by Nathan Hodge, CNN 
Updated 8:33 AM EDT, Sat June 11, 2022

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/10/europe/russia-putin-empire-restoration-endgame-intl-cmd/index.html

(CNN) Reading Russian President Vladimir Putin's mind is rarely a straightforward task, but on occasion the Kremlin leader makes it easy.

Such was the case on Thursday, when Putin met with a group of young Russian entrepreneurs. Anyone looking for clues as to what Putin's endgame for Ukraine might be should read the transcript, helpfully released here in English.
Putin's words speak for themselves: What he is aiming for in Ukraine is the restoration of Russia as an imperial power

Many observers quickly picked up on one of Putin's more provocative lines, in which he compared himself to Peter the Great, Russia's modernizing tsar and the founder of St. Petersburg -- Putin's own birthplace -- who came to power in the late 17th century.
"Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years," a relaxed and apparently self-satisfied Putin said. "On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it... He was not taking away anything, he was returning. This is how it was."
It didn't matter that European countries didn't recognize Peter the Great's seizure of territory by force, Putin added.

After 100 days of war, Putin is counting on the world's indifference

"When he founded the new capital, none of the European countries recognized this territory as part of Russia; everyone recognized it as part of Sweden," Putin said. "However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia's control. The same is true of the western direction, Narva and his first campaigns. Why would he go there? He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing."
Alluding directly to his own invasion of Ukraine, Putin added: "Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well."
Those remarks were swiftly condemned by Ukrainians, who saw them as a naked admission of Putin's imperial ambitions.
"Putin's confession of land seizures and comparing himself with Peter the Great prove: there was no 'conflict,' only the country's bloody seizure under contrived pretexts of people's genocide," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. "We should not talk about 'saving [Russia's] face,' but about its immediate de-imperialization."

Putin’s rambling Ukraine speech leaves western diplomats scrambling
Patrick Wintour
Diplomatic editor
Analysis: Russian president is toying with matches but has not yet lit the fuse, hence the west’s caution
* 		Ukraine-Russia crisis – latest updates

Tue 22 Feb 2022 08.24 EST
Last modified on Tue 22 Feb 2022 10.45 EST

Vladimir Putin’s angry and rambling hour-long potted history of Ukraine’s failings on Monday night, culminating in a commitment to recognise the self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Luhansk, left western diplomats scratching their heads and wondering whether they had been made redundant.

The Russian president not only said he would recognise Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine, rendering eight years of negotiations over their future pointless, but he also signalled that Russia could not tolerate an independent Ukraine on its borders. Nato was hardly mentioned. His target at one point seemed to be the Bolsheviks, for relinquishing land to the nationalists.[/quote]

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