Putin misses the mark with a card that should prove his historical right: “Pure stupidity” | War Ukraine and Russia

The president bent over a seventeenth-century French map, but apparently couldn’t read what it actually said. Not only is Ukraine explicitly described on the document as a separate country, but even Putin’s own city, Saint Petersburg, is referred to here as being Swedish territory. Hard to imagine that this was the intention of the broadcast.

Putin is known for wanting to bend history, partly to justify the invasion of Ukraine. Before the TV broadcast, the president was supposedly surprised by Valery Zorkin, the educated president of the Russian Constitutional Court. The latter claimed to have discovered a special map from the seventeenth century, originally compiled by the French during the reign of Louis XIV.

“This is common knowledge,” Putin responded, who stood over the card in question with Zorkin for over a minute. “These lands were simply part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and then they were asked to be part of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. It was only later, after the October Revolution, that quasi-state formations began to form. The Soviet government created Soviet Ukraine. Up to that point there was never a Ukraine in the history of mankind.”

Curious story, because the map does indeed and very clearly state (in French): ‘Ukraine or land of the Cossacks’. Professor Hans van Koningsbrugge, professor of the History and Politics of Russia at the University of Groningen, therefore viewed the fragment with amazement. “The fact that there is emphatic ‘land of the Cossacks’ over areas that Putin appropriates has been completely ignored. This made the whole display ridiculous and shows a painful lack of historical awareness,” said the Dutch professor.

Naturally, the incident sparked a lot of mockery on Twitter. Some have joked that the 17th-century map is good news for Putin, because the United States – which keeps Ukraine afloat with its military support – also doesn’t exist, according to the document. “Didn’t any of Putin’s staff seriously look at that map beforehand?” one wonders. Helpful Swedes even sent Putin older maps showing that more parts of Russia actually belong to Sweden.

Van Koningsbrugge: “St. Petersburg was indeed formally Swedish until 1721. If you look closely at that French map, it really doesn’t make sense: the Black Sea looks different, the Sea of ​​Azov is also difficult to recognize. Now if that Zorkin had any idea of ​​history, he would at least have shown a map from the late eighteenth century, when Marshal Potemkin had conquered that area for Catherine the Great. But to bring up this card is sheer stupidity. Maybe they don’t read French in the Kremlin and think it’s okay, not understanding that this will lead to ridicule and ridicule and that they will achieve the opposite of what they want.”

The conclusion of this whole story is that Putin is using yet another ad hoc reasoning to justify the attack on Ukraine, the professor thinks. “I call this selective shopping in the supermarket of history. It also says something about the Russian scholars who stood by. My second-year students can already see that it is not correct, but apparently that is too difficult for the Russians.”