This last point was emphasized by Putin in his long essay ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, published in July 2021, which can now be read as his justification for the invasion of Ukraine. Read More: Russia Declares Energy War With Leaking Pipelines The Mongols and the Turkic-speaking tribes, the Teutonic Knights, the Poles and Swedes, the Ottomans-they all invaded Russia prior to Napoleon. Its openness made Russia vulnerable to foreign invasion. There are no natural boundaries, neither seas nor mountain ranges, to define its territory, which throughout its history has been colonised by peoples from both continents. Russia grew on the forest lands and steppes between Europe and Asia.

Does Putin’s war of unprovoked aggression in Ukraine support this theory, or is it part of something new? Writers like the Marquis de Custine, in his bestselling Russian Travels (1839), argued that the country was fundamentally expansionist in character, a view later reinforced by the Cold War. Western fears of Russia reached their peak following the defeat of Napoleon by Alexander I, the third tsar in Putin’s pantheon. Between the sixteenth century, when it began the conquest of Siberia, and the Revolution of 1917 the Russian Empire grew at a rate of 50 square miles every day. The speed of Russia’s growth alarmed the powers of Europe.

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