Two years after a pirate attack against the sovereign and independent state of Ukraine, the Russian Federation is on the offensive on the front lines as the Moscow dictatorship prepares for elections designed to give Vladimir Putin grotesque electoral legitimacy. The murder of Oleksiy Navalny is the last gesture of the state, which confirms its criminal instincts. War and barbarism become the everyday environment of the Europe in which we live.

Revisionist war

The war in Ukraine was not an accident and not a manifestation of the whim of the tyrant who rules Russia. It is a manifestation, bloody, of a vision of the world and the place of the Russian nation in this international space, which must be rebuilt. Revisionism and imperialism are the ideological foundations on which this unprecedented approach is supported in the years after 1945.

Like Hitler’s Germany, today’s Russia seeks to eliminate a global order that it considers incompatible with its interests. Like Hitler’s Germany, today’s Russia seeks to impose an international system based on aggression, state crimes and violations of international law. The February 2022 gesture is a consequence of these clear ideological options.

Russian imperialism is a natural addition to the revisionist vocation. At the center is the belief in the messianic uniqueness of the national destiny. Russia is and cannot be anything other than an empire, and the territory of Ukraine belongs to the Russian state. The lessons of Putin’s history are the form in which this official discourse of Russia melts. Artificial construction, Ukraine has no right to exist. It must be erased from the map of Europe, destroyed in the same way as Poland was devoured by its annexationist neighbors at the end of the 18th century.

For modern Russia, war is a natural condition of existence. International sanctions, severe as they were, failed to fatally destabilize this new empire. Huge losses do not seem to be a starting point for discussion in Russian society. Human life has a price to pay, and the human waves attacking Ukraine feed from this seemingly inexhaustible reservoir. The majority of the Russian people seem to support the war, the goals of which they identify with. Changed by communism, Russian ethics under Putinism are compromised by collective cowardice. A nation that once created a culture, in the blessed year 2024, is an inert presence under the heel of this dictatorship. Hopes for a popular uprising are more remote than ever. Putin’s totalitarianism is on the way to the level of social control of Stalinism.

Putin’s Russia is at the center of a global system of alliances. China, North Korea and Iran are allies without which this war could not have lasted two years. The political neighborhood of modern Russia facilitates the visit of some criminal and tyrannical states. North Korea has become a veritable arsenal that supplies Russia with ammunition, and theocratic Iran technologically supports its trusted ally. As for countries such as Turkey, Lula’s Brazil or South Africa, which are dominated by old communist fellow travelers, they should provide Russia with an opportunity to break the cycle of diplomatic isolation. The battlefield of Putin’s Russia is as wide as that of the defunct USSR.

The war in Ukraine dramatically and tragically destroyed the pacifist illusions cultivated by Western Europe. The impossibility of supplying ammunition to Ukraine is the result of decades of unilateral disarmament: the fatal dream of peace fed the terrible reality of today. The urgency of rearmament is the urgency of deterrence. Those who hope for reconciliation are spreading vain hopes. The Russian Federation can be stopped only by increasing the level of military training. Putin’s regime must be opposed, not courted.

The gap between Western and Eastern Europe is a consequence of the difference in strategic vision. The former enslaved nations, with the exception of Orbán’s Hungary, are pressing for decisive action, abandoning the tactics of appeasement with Russia. Together with the Scandinavian countries, they are directly threatened by Russian imperialism. Hence the persistent calls for the organization of collective defense.

Two years of war show the future that the Moscow regime envisions for our continent. It is a future that resembles the past from which we come. In this future, which awakens Soviet instincts, there is no place for freedom and dignity of nations, only slavery. Another terrible protectorate will descend on our peoples. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro