“Does not correspond to reality”
Putin: Don’t want to build a new empire
02/22/2022, 3:20 p.m
Kremlin boss Putin is associated with the establishment of a new Russian empire. At a meeting with the head of state of a former Soviet state, he rowed back.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied allegations that his aggressive actions in eastern Ukraine are aimed at restoring a Russian empire. “We have heard speculation that Russia is preparing to build an empire again,” Putin said at a meeting with Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev in Moscow. “That in no way corresponds to reality.”
On Monday evening, Putin cast doubt on Ukraine’s independent statehood and announced the recognition of the separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east of the country. Ukraine was “completely created by Russia” and inseparable from his country, he said. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov accused him of taking another step towards reviving the Soviet Union. On Tuesday, Putin stressed that Russia had “recognized the new realities” after the collapse of the Soviet Union and was working with “all independent countries in the post-Soviet space”. He cited Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan as examples.
In the case of Ukraine, however, it is “different”. “The territory of this country is being used by third countries to create a threat to Russia,” Putin said. Since the “coup d’état” in the neighboring country, cooperation with Kiev has not been possible, he added, referring to the pro-Western protests in Ukraine in 2014.
Putin has long been suspected in the West of wanting to build a new empire 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has repeatedly referred to Russians and Ukrainians as one nation, much to Kiev’s annoyance. In July, he wrote an essay on the “Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which was received with horror in the West.
In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. In 2008, the Kremlin recognized the independence of two breakaway regions of Georgia. Since the early 1990s he has also supported secessionist tendencies in the Moldovan region of Transnistria.