Living Space…Anschluss

Over the last twenty-four hours, the Russian Goals have become even more transparent. There are more echoes of the road to World War Two. Putin made a case for Russian living space, Anschluss. He also told us that Ukraine has no history as a nation. In effect, this is a failed state.

This was the same argument Adolph Hitler made about Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. This was a natural land for ethnic Germans, and it was a failed state. Ergo, when the Germans invaded, they were invited in. It was…peace in our times, announced by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

I don’t think I need to remind anybody how that ended. The modern world came from the ashes of that war. Millions died, whether civilian or military. We had a genocide as well. So when the president of Russia makes arguments that echo Anschluss, I pay attention.

Vladimir Putin was a KGB Colonel in East Germany when the Soviet Union collapsed. He fled, and that has been a historic grievance for this man. This was his most important formative moment. Yes, there are parallels to the end of the First World War and the big lie that animated Hitler.

The parallels end here though. One of the people in his inner circle is Alexandr Dugin, a crank, philosopher, political scientist, self-important nationalist. Putinism relies on Dugin for a lot of its core thinking. It is where the manifest destiny of the modern Russian state comes from. It is reinforced by the Russian Orthodox Church, whose patriarchs see Kyiv as a spiritual home. The Ukrainian…