: How Putin’s Denial of Ukraine’s Statehood Rewrites History #WorldNEWS As Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two rebel-held regions in eastern Ukraine late Monday night, recognizing

How Putin’s Denial of Ukraine’s Statehood Rewrites History #WorldNEWS
As Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two rebel-held regions in eastern Ukraine late Monday night, recognizing the regions as independent, he returned to a familiar argument that the Kremlin has pushed for years: that Ukraine’s claim to statehood is entirely baseless. In a televised address to the nation, Putin explicitly denied that Ukraine had ever had “real statehood,” and said the country was an integral part of Russia’s “own history, culture, spiritual space. ”
Putin’s speech, which went on for nearly an hour, was a new twist in the long-running battle to define Ukraine’s place in the world. In it, Putin set out his belief more forcefully than ever before that Ukraine is intrinsically Russian, that its three decades as a nation-state have been incoherent, and that the country owes its existence to a series of mistakes by bumbling Soviet leaders. (He made a series of similar arguments in an essay published last summer. )
[time-brightcove not-tgx=true]
Read More: The Threat of a Russian Invasion Is Crushing Ukraines Economy and Culture
In the speech, Putin laid out his version of Ukrainian history. He started by saying that modern Ukraine was a creation of Vladimir Lenin, who carved a Soviet Republic out of what Putin said was Russian land. Putin said that Joseph Stalin supplemented Ukrainian lands with lands from other eastern European countries following the Second World War, and that his successor Nikita Khrushchev “took Crimea away from Russia for some reason and gave it to Ukraine” in 1954. Putin said that these decisions were “worse than a mistake,” and went on to criticize Ukraine for “mindlessly emulating foreign models” after its 1991 independence.
But Western analysts say that Putin’s remarks are a mischaracterization of history intended to justify Russian claims over Ukraine.
Russian suppression of Ukrainian statehood
While the two countries share an intertwined history, Ukrainians have been quick to point out that Kyiv was founded hundreds of years earlier than Moscow, and that Ukraine has its own distinct language and customs.
“Part of the reason that Ukraine has never had stable statehood is because of Russia,” says David Patrikarakos, an author of two books about foreign affairs and non-resident fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He says that Putin deliberately ignored the long history of Ukrainian nationalism, including the country’s war of independence against the Soviets that began in 1917, and its resistance to Soviet rule after World War II. “There has been a strong impulse of Ukrainian nationalism for at least the last century, and [of] the Russians just slapping them down militarily,” Patrikarakos says.