What's going on inside Putin's mind? His own words give us a disturbing clue | Michel Eltchaninoff

The Russian president's dangerous sense of victimhood draws on 20th-century ideas of his country's frustrated potential

They have only one objective: to prevent the development of Russia. They are going to do it in the same way as they did it before, without furnishing even a single pretext, doing it just because we exist."

These were Vladimir Putin's words on 21 February, in his now notorious speech on Ukraine. They repeat the argument already formulated in his speech on Crimea in March 2014: The politics of the containment of Russia, which continued throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today. There is a constant attempt to push us back into a corner because we have an independent position, because we stand up for ourselves." Putin's vision of Russian history is one of an emergence continually blocked by enemies.

Michel Eltchaninoff is editor-in-chief of Philosophie magazine and a specialist in the history of Russian thought. He is the author of Inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin. This article was translated by Julian Coman

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