BIG READ: What Putin really wants is the return of an empire
Russia’s war in Ukraine is more about identity politics than Nato expansion
A lot has been written about Vladimir Putin’s war with the future and the past. He wants a future that would take Russia to the centre stage of world affairs, and is unhappy with that country’s loss of (early) Tsarist pride and more recent Soviet collapse. Beyond descriptions, commentaries or analyses on what Putin says and does, there are exciting and insightful aspects of the global social and historical (and philosophical) contexts of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Putin’s war can be situated in a global shift towards the Right; a drift towards ethno-nationalism with distinct echoes of fascism. Perhaps most significantly is Putin’s association with the idea of a Eurasia that includes a toxic identity politics that is part of “birth politics” — which has become code-speak for racial determination, and racism in general. We will get to all of that after a brief report on the most recent developments in Russia’s war on the Ukrainian people...
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