In the second week of February, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz— two western leaders with a reasonably comfortable working relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin—were in Moscow. Both, however, failed to dissuade Putin from escalating the threat against Ukraine.
What really made news after the two visits was the six-metre long, gold-plated table used for the meetings. Putin apparently wanted Macron and Scholz to do a Covid test, but both were in no mood to leave their DNA samples with the Russians. So, Putin brought out one of the longest tables in the Kremlin, to keep the two Europeans at a safe distance.
Back in August 2020, however, when the whole world was shut down because of the pandemic, Putin happily came out of his bio-bubble to receive one of his closest friends—Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian politician from Ukraine, his wife, Oksana, and their daughter Daria, who is also his godchild. The much publicised meeting with the Medvedchuks was Putin’s first public appearance after the pandemic started, and he posed for photos without a mask. Ukraine holds a very special place in Putin’s heart. For him, it is not a separate country, but a part of Russia itself.
THE POLITICS OF HISTORY
Putin explained his Ukraine obsession last year with a 7,000word essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” He claimed Russians and Ukrainians were “one people belonging to the eastern Slavic stock”, sharing the Ukrainian capital Kyiv as the mother of all Russia.
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