Empire restoration is end of game for Russia, Vladimir Putin

Such was the case Thursday when Putin met with a group of Russian entrepreneurs. Anyone looking for information on what could be the end of Putin's game for Ukraine should read the transcript.

Putin's words speak for themselves: What he intends in Ukraine is the restoration of Russia as an imperial power.

Many observers quickly received one of Putin's most provocative lines, in which he compared himself to Peter the Great, the modernizing Russian car and the founder of St Petersburg's birthplace, which came to power at the end of the 17th century.

“The Great Peter held the Northern Great War for 21 years”, said a relaxed and seemingly self-discreet Putin. “On her sight, he was at war with Sweden taking something from her... He wasn't taking anything from her, he was just turning. That's how things were”.

It was not important that European countries did not recognise the force taking of the territory by Great Petr, Putin added.

When he founded the new capital, no European country recognised this territory as part of Russia; everyone recognised it as part of Sweden”, Putin said. However, from immortal times, Slavs lived there, along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia's control. The same is true of the western directorate, Narva and his first campaign. Why would he go there? He was returning and strengthening, that's what he was doing”.

While alluding to his invasion of Ukraine, Putin added: “Dertically, it fell on us to return and also reinforce”.

These statements were strongly condemned by Ukrainians, who saw them as the naked admission of Putin's imperial ambitions.

Putin's application of land invasion and his comparison with the Great Peter testify: there was no conflict only between the bloody capture of the earth under the fabricated pretexts of the popular genocide”, Mykhailo Podolyak, presidential adviser, said in Tite. We shouldn't talk about saving Russia's face, but about its immediate de-imperisation”.

There's a lot to unlock here, in the sense of present and historical relationships. Podolyak was hinting to negotiate in international cities about offering Putin a face-saving way to desecrate or stop fighting in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron has directed this effort, saying last week that the world “should not humiliate Russia” in search of a diplomatic solution.

These arguments could have been seen more reasonable before February 24. On the way to the invasion, Putin launched a series of complaints to build a cause for war from NATO's expansion to the distribution of Western military assistance towards Ukraine.

But read closely the transcript of Putin's speech Thursday, and the facade of rational geopolitical markets collapses.

“In order to claim a kind of leadership- and I'm not talking about the world leadership, I mean leadership in every area -- every country, every people and every ethnic group should ensure their sovereignty”, Putin said. “Because there is no middle state, there is no middle state: a country either is sovereign or it's a colony, no matter what colonies are called”.

In other words, there are two categories of state: sovereign and conquered. In Putin's imperialistic appearance, Ukraine must fall in the second category.

Putin has long argued that Ukrainians do not have a legitimate national identity and that their state, in essence, is a puppet of the West. In contrast, he feels that Ukrainians have no agenda and are a subjective people.

Calling to the memory of the Great Peter also becomes clearer than Putin's intentions are guided by a sense of historical fate. And the revival of Putin's imperial design could in theory expand to other territories that have previously been met with the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, something that should raise alarms in all countries that have emerged from the deregulation of the Soviet Union.

Earlier this week, an MP from the United Russia party handed over a draft law towards Russian Dumas to abolish a Soviet resolution that recognises Lithuania's independence. Lithuania can now be a member of NATO and part of the Soviet Union, but in Putin's Russia, that kind of neo-colonising attitude is the most real demonstration of loyalty to the president.

And this is not a good warning for Russia's future. If there is no acceptance of Russia's imperial past, whether under the Caristian or Soviet mask, there are small possibilities that a Russia saw Putin would abandon a model of the annihilation of its neighbours or become a more democratic state.

Former US National Adviser for Security Zbignie Brzezinski famously praised that Russia could only deal with its imperialist customs if it is willing to hand over its claims to Ukraine.

The “cannot be strongly emphasized that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine subdued and then suspended, Russia automatically becomes an empire”, he wrote in 1994.

Putin, however, is counting on its opposite: For Russia to survive, he argues, it must remain an empire, regardless of the cost in people.

♪ Sokol Berisha, Periscopi