The people of Georgia, Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine would beg to differ.
This is either a typo or some next-level tinfoil hattery...
- Crimea became part of Russia before Texas became part of US
- Crimea became part of Russia before (around the time) US independence
- Kievan Rus' is older than Aztec Empire
- Before the US, the colonies were English, French, Dutch, Swedish, etc.
- Before the colonies, it was of course Native American land.
- Before the Anglosaxons, Britain was Celtic.
- Kievans are much older than Russians. Russia was created by a few Swedes forking the local Slav tribes.
- Before Moscow, there were Poles Bulgarians and Mongols.
Shall we go on?
Should British demand their colonies back?
Should Indians demand their land?
Crimea was part of Russia, true. Give Italy what it had first and then we will give Crimea to Russia (and let's have a WW3 and all be dead me give the planet the break it deserves (from human stupidity))
Similar thing can be said about disputed teritorries in the east, around Donbas.
Of course that's still not the excuse for what Russia did, taking both places by force, however, this makes fixing this more complicated.
Let's stick to the borders we got, and in the future let's rener them useless (e.g. European Union).
I believe in a Star Trek society. Not "we kicked butts back then so let's get back those lands".
There is no bigger "grand plan" to them than to an 8th century Viking raid: more subjects, loot, and territories to use to stage further invasions.
Danes cared more for how tasty the British were, before they started to care about the British throne and court politics in the bigger Post-Roman world.
And now Russia spend enormous amount of money to develop Crimea. Where's the looting?
That sounds like a geopolitical ambition to me.
(to be even more specic, Crimean events were mostly about regaining the control of the Black Sea Fleet naval base, while Donbass events were about reacting to a hostile coup, but the two things are closely related)
It was also an object lesson to all the minor powers in the region: you cannot take US money to have a small victorious colour revolution anymore. Not in Russia's backyard.
edit: oh wow downvotes, I am so surprised /s
Which is in stark contradiction to the sophisticated goals of the West to control as much of the world's market as possible in order for mega multinationals to be able to exploit cheap labor and maintain their insane margins, so that they're able to pay their executives an ex-politicians millions of dollars per year.
Very unlike the goals of Russian oligarchs indeed and much more sophisticated.
This is not just faux news either, the experts are on all channels. No wonder the public has low trust of news these days.
Sucks to know that even a person who is such a high ranking official like an ambassador gets such shitty advice.
As a counter-example (one of many), Russia has been for a long time losing money by subsidizing Belarusian economy with cheap oil.
Today's Russia seems more assertive again with their geopolitical interests.
Are you sure about that?
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/1990s-manifesto-outlini...
If readers are ok cherry picking from his work, and go on, they should also argue his points that there be a stealthy Russian amphibious landing on US soil, and Russian agents flooding US with "psychotronic agent" to steer US elections...
The guy just puts a shopping list of all obvious nasty things that could happen to the West, and call it a strategy. Few things from that coming true, does not mean them acting on this as a guiding policy.
Continuing the parallel with Danish: yes, Vikings main interest with British Islands was loot and plunder, but they were not dumb to the level where they make invading the British harder for themselves. When given a chance, they would thoroughly mess up British political arrangements with all means available to them.
Not sure how this benefits Russia. Each country has stategic reserves. Gas / oil is the only thing Russia can sell to the Western Europe in order to finance their own system. Russians have to sell it. Blackmailing countries is not in their business.
I once have heard this position from US ambassador in Kazakhstan on a private reception event.
The guy told people he expected a visit to a *stan country to be like a visit to a warzone.
He was learning martial arts, hostage negotiation, and been mentored by multiple self proclaimed experts on "warlord politics" of the region.
There was no end to his disappointment when he came to understanding that all that geopolitical BS he learned was for nothing, and he came to station the most boring post-Soviet hillbilly town.
I think most Americans, even the most educated ones tend to greatly overthink "geopolitical conspiracies"
Ex-USSR fiefdoms, Russia included, are ran by very simple people, without any geopolitical ambitions.
For them, blackmailing Germany and other wealth nations in Europe by threatening to close the tap has no political story to it at all, just plainly a way to extort some extra bucks, and show the world how big their balls are.