The War in Ukraine and Eurasia’s New Imperial Moment

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shockedWestern observers. Seizures of territory, mass expulsions, and all-out assaults on Ukrainian culture hearken back to an earlier, darker era in European history—the era of empire. Indeed, the conflict may be the 21 century’s first imperial war. For President Vladimir Putin and many others in the Russian elite, Ukraine’s underlying provocation lay not so much in its aspiration to join NATO or the European Union, but in the very temerity it displayed in existing at all. Expressing ideas that are widespread among Russian thinkers and politicians, Putin has argued that Ukrainians and Russians are, as he put it in 2014, “one people, a single whole”—and that because he considers Ukraine part of Russia’s own historic patrimony, Moscow retains the right to conquer and reshape it with no regard for its inhabitants. In denying the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood, Putin is also denying the legitimacy of Russia’s current borders, which took shape after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ever since, Russia has maintained (or secured) de facto control over a range of territories belonging to the internationally recognized territory of other states: Transnistria (Moldova), Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Georgia), and of course, Crimea and the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk (Ukraine). Putin has also established effective political