President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reiterated his position that Russia did not start the war in Ukraine but launched what it calls a “special military operation” to try to stop it.
In his yearly speech to the Valdai Discussion Club, being held in Sochi, Putin said Russia, the world’s largest country by area, had no need to take territory from Ukraine.
He said the conflict was not therefore imperial or territorial but about the global order, and that the West, which had lost its hegemonic power and always needed an enemy, had lost touch with reality.
I’m a little confused, how does one separate actions towards global order from imperial actions? Aren’t imperial actions typically in relation to attempting to establish or maintain a nation’s position in, or as, the global order? In a similar vein, does anyone believe the West is a genuine, political entity that is altogether united, rather than a basic academic concept to help differentiate some elements of the world from others?
Last I looked around, the West is about as much of a real political entity that’s wholly united about as much as the East is, which is to say, it isn’t.