The aggression against Ukraine stems from Putin’s speech as a re-founder czar. For at least fifteen years Putin has been theorizing the reconstruction of a great Slavic power dominated by Russia and based on order, hierarchy, illiberal ideology and contempt for the corrupt West. His rhetoric feeds on very different pieces of history, from the Great-Russian nationalism preceding 1914 to the legacy of Stalin by choosing the Soviet victory in the Second World War to legitimize the new Russian state: a war for liberation from the Nazis, of course, but also a war against the oppression of the peoples of Eastern Europe. To these historical roots we add the rhetoric of humiliation: that the Russian people suffered after the collapse of the USSR. The myth of the humiliated nation starts wars – writes Dr Giovanni Cascone in his comment “War pushes us to re-define Europe”.
