Might Ukraine might be just the first country on Vlad the Invader’s wish list? Stella Ghervas, professor of Russian history at Newcastle University, believes Putin is inspired by the borders of the old Russian Empire, once one of the world’s great powers.
And she says that to understand his motivations we need to go back to before the so-called October Revolution of 1917 which ushered in the Bolsheviks and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire back then, but so were countries like Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan and Georgina. And perhaps most chillingly, not long before, so was Russia ’s northwestern-most territory Alaska until it was sold to the USA in 1867.
Prof Ghervas, author of Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union, says Putin’s wish to turn back the clock could bring unprecedented danger to the world.
She says: “To understand the motivations behind Putin’s move, we have to go back over a century.
“Today’s Russian Federation, established in 1991, is, to all intents and purposes, the heir of the Soviet Union, itself established on the rubble of the Russian Empire after the October Revolution in 1917.
“Unsurprisingly, the borders of the Russian Empire in 1914 remain a point of reference for the Kremlin up to our day. And that’s despite all the ‘isms’ that have intervened, notably Bolshevism, Stalinism, and capitalism.
“Putin is using yet another ‘ism’ to justify the recent Russian military entry into two self-proclaimed rebel republics of Donetsk and Luhansk - irredentism.
“The word means the ‘longing for unredeemed lands’, and it was invented by Italian nationalists before World War One. As far as Putin is concerned, those lands have been ‘redeemed’ for greater Russia - despite Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence.
“One of Putin’s main arguments is that there are Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk who need protection, and that what is now Ukraine was a historic part of Russia.
“Yet there is a glaring omission - the Russian colonisation in the region, mostly in the late 18th and 19th century, was the result of Russia’s imperial drive toward the South, in which earlier inhabitants (Cossacks, Tatars, and others) were forcibly assimilated, killed or deported.
"It is therefore military expansionism, going back two centuries, not ethnic considerations, that have brought about the present demography of the region. Using more force to ‘right the wrong’ will inevitably make things worse.
"There may be a risk for the Baltic countries, but they are probably not primary targets, since they are members of both the EU and NATO.
"On the other hand, the Russia has had armies occupying pieces of its neighbouring countries around the Black Sea, Moldova and Georgia, since the 1990s, as well as Crimea since 2014.
"From the Dniestr river in Moldova to the EU border with Romania it would be three hours drive for armoured vehicles. There are officially around 1000 regular Russian soldiers illegally stationed in in Moldova, but in view of the illegal weapon stockpiles in that region, who knows how many paramilitary could be mobilised overnight for such an operation.
"So far, the Kremlin was not showing signs of decisively pressing its advantage. That is, up to today: right now, it is not wholly impossible that what the Kremlin had been planning all along a Blitzkrieg to landlock Ukraine in a very short period of time.
"I certainly do not have a crystal bowl: but if that really was the scenario, Romanian guards at the border of the Prut River could wake up, one fine morning, with Russian soldiers in front of them.”
