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- Title
No Great Russia without Greater Russia: The Kremlin's Thinking behind the Invasion of Ukraine.
- Authors
Casier, Tom
- Abstract
This paper argues that to understand the invasion of Ukraine, it is necessary to have better insights into the Kremlin's particular worldview and Russia's place within it. This view is based on a sense of entitlement to great power status going hand in hand with an identity of itself as a country that extends beyond the actual borders of the Russian Federation. What makes the position unique is that the geopolitical and identity arguments are inseparable: in the Kremlin's worldview, Russia can only be a great power if it also exists as greater Russia. This structural factor is labelled the geopolitics-identity nexus. To explain why the invasion happened in 2022, three additional process factors are outlined: a radicalization of the view of Ukraine as Russian lands, driven by the feeling of existential crisis when tensions over Ukraine escalated in 2014; an escalation of policy options resulting from consecutive failures in Russia's Ukraine policy; and a reversal of the argument that Russia has to be a great power to exist within its 1991 borders into the argument that Russia has to expand its territory to be a great power.
- Subjects
RUSSIA; UKRAINE; KREMLIN (Moscow, Russia); GREAT powers (International relations); WORLDVIEW; GEOPOLITICS
- Publication
Canadian Journal of European & Russian Studies (CJERS), 2023, Vol 16, Issue 2, p14
- ISSN
2562-8429
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.22215/cjers.v16i2.4148