Sure, it’s Russian troops that launched an unprovoked invasion…But it’s the West that started the war in Ukraine. That’s the long repeated line spun again this Monday at a summit in China by Vladimir Putin. Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it, goes the saying… but to those cry cynism, for Putin, this founding myth story’s not at all a myth.
Tried and true Kremlinologists insist the ex-KGB agent genuinely feels grievance and genuinely believes in greater Russia’s manifest destiny, a right to expand steeped in nostalgia and mysticism.
After a summer of chatter about venues and incentives for still hypothetical direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks, we’ll ask about the mindset in Moscow and elsewhere across the several time zones of the Russian Federation…and about a traditional NATO leader whose mixed messages fuel uncertainty over its loyalties and embolden all those in the West who buy Putin’s line.
Produced by François Picard, Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
-
Elena VOLOCHINE France 24 senior reporter
-
Craig COPETAS Contributing Editor, The Daily Beast
-
Manlio GRAZIANO Professor of geopolitics, Sciences Po and La Sorbonne
-
Boris BONDAREV Former Russian diplomat
English (US) · 