Anyone who wants to know what Putin’s future plans are for Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and all the other countries which achieved independence in 1991 if he wins need only look at what the Kremlin leader is doing in the non-Russian autonomies within the current borders of Russia, Vitaly Portnikov says.
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In those autonomies, the Ukrainian commentator says, Putin is imposing outsiders to rule them, destroying their native languages and cultures, and spreading the myth that they all belong to the Russian world that he is rebuilding after the treachery of Gorbachev at the end of Soviet times.
There can be no doubt, Portnikov continues, that Putin wants to do exactly the same things to those countries he is able to conquer and re-subordinate to Moscow, something that explains why non-Russians outside the borders of Russia and indeed all people of good will anywhere have compelling reasons to ensure his defeat in Ukraine.
“If Ukraine succeeds in defending its statehood and territorial integrity,” the Ukrainian commentator says, “then the processes of marginalization and decay will begin within Russia itself. That is because Russian chauvinism won’t have enough strength to try to extend itself anywhere else.”
And that, in turn, means that “even the peoples of Russia will get a chance it not to end their destructive cohabitation with the Russian people then to at least achieve the transformation of Russia into a real union of equal peoples, where Russians will be just one ethnic group among others and Russian just one language among all the others as well.”
“Ukrainians today are fighting for all the oppressed, for all those whom the archaic empire has deceived, humiliated and destroyed for centuries,” Portnikov says. “A destructive course that, in the process of which, the rulers of Russia degenerated,” into what is one view in the Kremlin today.
Each historical turn has been a step “down toward collapse,” one in which those responsible want to take everyone else with them.
Read more:
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- Putin’s “annexation” of Donbas showed Crimea was no special case and his loss of Kherson shows Ukraine can retake it, Portnikov says
- Demise of Russia likely to be more prolonged, violent, and more supported by the West: Opinion
- Russia’s war accelerated crystallization of Ukrainian identity – Vitaliy Portnikov
- The spectre of the FSB haunts Moldova, next target of Russia’s hybrid war
- Putin’s peace talks ruse: why the West should listen to Ukraine
