Before medieval Rus’ split into its many parts, which in the course of hundreds of years led to the emergence of the present trio of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deep back in the 10th century it was ruled by Prince Vladimir, variously spelt as Volodymyr, Vladymir, Volodimir and the like. What a coincidence that today’s two parts of the medieval Rus’ are also governed by men whose names are reminiscent of the most famous medieval ruler Vladimir, with one of them being Vladimir Putin and the other – Volodymyr Zelensky. The few variants of spelling show accidentally how much dissimilar or rather how much similar are Russian and Ukrainian, descendants of the language used in Rus’ in the Middle Ages. The difference may be like that between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, or Czech and Slovak, in which case mutual intelligibility stands at 95%, or that between German spoken in Bavaria or Berlin. Linguistic classifications are – just like anything that allegedly is part of otherwise objective science or scholarship – subject to political pressure to the effect that at one time in history two varieties of a language are recognized as… precisely two varieties, while at other historical times they are all of a sudden viewed as two totally separate tongues. The same was true of the Serbo-Croatian language now mercilessly split into three “very much” different languages of Croatian and Serbian and Bosnian. It was no less a figure than Bernard Shaw who is credited to have said that the United States and the United Kingdom are two countries divided by the common language, but we are digressing.

The medieval ruler of medieval Rus’ – Vladimir/Volodymyr (take your pick) – is regarded by both Russians and Ukrainians as a founder of their respective present-day states or – as it is customarily (yet somehow misleadingly) said in the English language – nations. He was the one who held the many territories in his iron grip, but first and foremost he was the one who in 988 joined Rus’ (present-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia) to the Christian family of European states by having Rus’ christened. When Rus’ was about to be baptized, a name like Ukraine did not exist (and would not exist for many centuries to come); instead, the designation Belarus = White Rus’ had currency. It did not, however, denote a dukedom or principality, a kingdom or any other political entity: it denoted the Western part of the vast territories occupied by and collectively known as Rus’. Apart from White Rus’ we had Red Rus’ to denote the souther regions of Rus’ and Black and Green Rus’ the denote respectively the northern and eastern part of the same. There was a common word that resembled today’s name Ukraine, but it meant edge, border, or borderline. It had and still has a lot to do with the Slavic word meaning cut, cut off. With time it began to be applied to territories that were regarded as a country;s edge or that were cut off from a country. Such was the birthmark of the appellative Ukraine. By the way, the same could be observed in the former Yugoslavia, where the borderland between Croatia and Serbia is known as Krajina (cf.: u-kraine). Just as Ukraine was the south-eastern edge of the once large Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an edge protecting the Commonwealth against Turks and the Grand Duchy of Moscow, so was Krajina a strip of land, guarding the Habsburg Monarchy, which comprised Croatia, against the Ottoman Empire, which at that time comprised Serbia. But again, back to the core story.

Vladimir, the ruler of all Rus’, had a hard time deciding to transform his nation. Christianity was by no means the only choice that he faced. Also Muslims and Judaic Khazars vied for the ruler’s attention, while Christians had already been split between the Western (later known as Catholic) and Eastern (later known as Orthodox) branches. Yet choose he had to, because stepwise, Vladimir along with the governing elite had grown out of the Slavic heathen beliefs. Much the same would play out a thousand years later when the elites of the heathen Soviet Union would begin to slough off the economically and politically pagan Marxism-Leninism and steer their country towards the family of the majority of the nations of the world by (re)accepting the political (democracy) and economic (free market) and financial (capitalism) credo.

Vladimir, the medieval ruler of Rus’, had a choice, as mentioned above. He could opt for accepting the faith of the Khazars, Muslims, Eastern or Western Christians. That would have automatically meant his alliance with Khazars, Muslims, Eastern or Western Christians. Vladimir decided to choose the Orthodox version of Christianity. He and his entourage became Christian, very soon to be followed by the rest of the Rus’ population. Vladimir just wanted to join his state to the family of Christian states. Why, at that time Europe was almos all Christian, either Catholic or Orthodox (Bulgarians and Serbs). Vladimir simply wished to (or felt compelled, or felt attracted to) turn Rus’ into a member state of Christendom. He may have thought that step would protect his subjects from being molested by the Christian rulers. Alas!

The chivalrous religious orders – non-state actors on the medieval political scene – were not only founded in the Holy Land during the notorious crusades: they were also founded in the Iberian peninsula, where they combated the Muslim invaders, and along the south-eastern Baltic littoral, where they were supposed to fight Lithuanian and Slavic pagans (in modern parlance, their task was to bring democracy and human rights). It took Lithuanians more time to let themselves be baptized, but medieval Russians did it, as said above, already in the 10th century. Never mind that detail. Approximately two and a half centuries later – i.e. when all of Rus’ was firmly in the Christian grip – the German Livonian order would continue to make inroads into Russian territory, which culminated in the famous Battle on the Ice of 1242, when Alexander nicknamed Nevsky, one of the many descendants of the same Vladimir that christened Rus’, reported a big victory.

It is worth bearing in mind that the Livonian Chivalrous Order tried to suppress and subdue chunks of northern Rus’ at precisely the time when almost all of Rus’ was struggling with non-Christian Mongols also known as Tartars. One might (naively) think, Western Christians would have been more than willing to come to the aid of their Christian Orthodox brothers, especially when those brothers were existentially threatened by non-Christian tribes. Sadly, that was not to be. Rus’ may have been Christian and still this act did not turn it into an acceptable member of Christendom.

At the very beginning of the 18th century, precisely when Russian Tsar Peter I was hurriedly and vehemently turning his backward Russia into a westernized, Europeanized modern state, it faced an invasion of Swedes, who were only stopped at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 (south of Kiev). At the very beginning of the 18th century, when Russia as an empire whose elites almost preferred to speak French rather than their native tongue and certainly admired everything and anything French, when native-speakers of French as tutors to the children and the youth of Russian aristocracy and gentry were in high demand (leaf through Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the original and notice the many French dialogues inserted here and there, illustrating how firmly the French languages was rooted in high society), Russia was invaded by… a French-led coalition of European armies which managed to even capture Moscow (1812). Though two years later Russian armies marched into Paris, nonetheless Rus’ or Imperial Russia continued to admire everything and anything French while the West continued to spurn and denigrate Russia.

Fast forward to the 20th century and we see the same events and the same phenomena repeating themselves: yes, Soviet Russia repelled the Western invader and captured Berlin, but still and despite having been almost obliterated by the Western armies, and still and despite waging a four-decade long Cold War that ensued after 1945, Russian elites just couldn’t restrain themselves from kowtowing to the West and eventually trading their sovereignty for the promise of being accepted as full members of the Western, democratic, capitalistic world. You know, that’s the spell that MacDonald’s and Jeans and rock music casts on nations with an inferiority complex. This time, another Vladimir, better known as Vladimir Putin, tried to make overtures to the Western powers and clearly played up to them, offering Rus’ with all its citizens and resources as a joining fee. Even before Putin in his capacity of President, to please the West, Russia discarded and abandoned its communist (heathen, pagan) faith, dissolved the Warsaw Pact (the Eastern equivalence of the Western Atlantic alliance), let go of its fourteen republics which became separate, sovereign states, imbibed Western democratic political rules, internalized capitalist economic principles and even wanted to be admitted to NATO, while putting forward proposals of expanding the European cooperation from Lisbon on the Atlantic to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean. To no avail.

Russia was rejected, spurned, and frowned upon. Yes, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (all former Soviet republics, earlier also parts of the Russian Empire) could become NATO members, Ukraine and Georgia (also former Soviet republics, earlier also parts of the Russian Empire) were invited to join the alliance, yet Russia was denied. Why?

The medieval Vladimir, the ruler of medieval Rus’, had a choice between Khazars, Muslims, and Christians. Well, the present-day Vladimir has a similar choice between the Chinese, Iranians and the (post-Christian) West. A thousand years have passed and Rus’ – Russia – is faced with the same dilemma. A thousand years have passed and – as if nothing happened in the course of centuries – Russia is challenged again and again while its existence is threatened. Being snubbed by the West, Russia has gravitated into China’s embrace and has been made to ally itself with Iran and North Korea rather than becoming a NATO or EU member.

By the way, how did Russia become again pagan at the beginning of the 20th century, how did it become an atheistic Soviet republic? Why, while experiencing difficulties arising from the prolonged war, later to be known as the First World War, Russia fell prey to a series of events that today would be called colour revolutions: a more proper name for those occurring towards the end of the First World War would be calendar revolutions: the one that broke out in February is known as the February Revolution, while the other that took place in November – the November Revolution. How those revolutions come about? Just like the notorious Euromaidans in Kiev: Western powers (the British and the Germans) provided money and subversive activists (Kerensky, Lenin, Trotsky) to overthrow the ‘dictator’ commonly referred to as tsar, and then to topple the legitimate and democratic government. Just think of it: one hundred years apart, almost to the year (1917 – 2014) and the same scenario played out, earlier in Sankt-Petersburg/Petrograd, later in Kiev.

Whether Russia is Christian (from Vladimir to the outbreak of the October Revolution) or pagan (before Vladimir and during the time of the existence of the Soviet Union), whether it is capitalist or socialist, whether it emulates anything Western (French, American) or remains isolated, whether it expands its territory (especially under the rule of Peter I, Catherine I, Alexander I, Stalin) or shrinks, giving up on huge chunks of it (the 1917 Brest-Litovsk peace agreement with Germany, the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union), whether its is ruled by a tsar, a parliament, a secretary general of the communist party or a president, only one catchphrase rings in the Western mind: Ruthenia delenda est, come hell or high water.

A friendly reminder: the first Vladimir at the beginning of the millennial history of Rus’/Russia, the man who pondered whether to ally himself with Khazars, Muslims, or Christians, has come down in history as Great: Vladimir the Great. He is regarded as the father of the nation by Russians and Ukrainians and Belorussians. Which of the two present-day Vladimirs – the one ruling Ukraine or the one ruling Russia – will come down in history as great? 

On March 5, Dimitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former President of Russia, gave a speech at the World Youth Festival held in Sochi. In a leisurely manner Dimitry Medvedev laid out the outline of Russia’s policy and Moscow’s stance on the current political events. He said among others:

We do not need foreign territory, but we will never cede what is ours. It was 210 years ago that Russian troops captured Paris. On doing so Russia established a government in France that was Russia-friendly and friendly towards Russia’s allies. We have never, either before or afterwards, sent our armies so far westwards. Why did we need to do it at that time? We needed to do it because we needed to remove the prime threat to our existence.

Geopolitics assume the following thesis: each sovereign state has two kinds of borders and these are geographic borders and strategic borders. The former overlap with the territory actually occupied by a state, the latter correspond to the international political clout of the state: the more powerful a state is, the larger the territory enclosed within its strategic borders. The strategic borders overlap with the zone of political, cultural and economic leverage of the state. Though the strategic interests are not tantamount to national interest, they are closely related. That’s a historical fact, commencing from the Roman Empire. The empire’s strategic borders covered a territory larger than the empire’s geographic borders. Weak states were included in the empire’s zone of influence; weak states oftentimes willingly assumed the role of vassals in return for the political protection granted to them by the suzerain, by the empire. In our times vassal states are politely referred to as friendly states. The moment an empire begins to lose its international political clout, its strategic borders shrink. That is what happened to the Portugal, Spanish and French global empires. Surely, in the case of Russia its strategic borders extend far beyond its geographical borders.

As for the so-called Ukraine or to be precise Little Russia, our antagonists ought to remember once and for all: the territory on either bank of the Dnieper are an inalienable part of Russia’s historical strategic zone, which is why any and all attempts to snatch those territories from us are doomed to failure. Russia’s strategic geopolitical zone stems from the times of medieval Rus’. This zone is characterized by the common language, religion and culture. These territories are Russia’s holy space. Our enemies keep repeating that Russia’s goal is allegedly to conquer Ukraine, but nazi-Ukraine has nothing to offer to Russia: we have all the resources and in much larger quantities. The only wealth that Ukraine has and that we will never share with anybody is Ukraine’s people, who are in point of fact our relatives. Our enemies have managed to brainwash Ukrainians into zombies. We need to return Ukrainians to our common fold. The greatest enemy of Ukrainians is their current destructive state. Under the current Kiev regime, the best Ukrainians can hope for is to become a footstool of the West, a dispensable material. Once Ukraine’s leader coined a phrase: Ukraine is not Russia [The title of President Leonid Kuchma’s book.]. Now this phrase ought to be obliterated once and for all: Ukraine IS with no doubt Russia!

The United States operates in the remotest corners of the globe, but is oh so sensitive when it comes to its sphere of influence. Washington regards Mexico and Canada as its backyard. Recall: a 1917 proposal from Berlin to turn Mexico into Germany’s ally immediately compelled Washington to enter the First World War against Germany. What would the United States do now if there was a world power aiming at encircling the United States with military bases, trying to incite and exploit American internal conflicts and demanding decolonization along with the independence for California and Texas? What would happen then? We know what would happen: the Caribbean Crisis 2.0. The current circumstances are far worse. In 1962, the Soviet Union and the United States were psyching other up. Now the United States is for all practical purposes at war with the Russian Federation. The current neo-nazi Ukraine is the West’s battering ram against Russia. The collective West by means of Ukraine seeks to materialize the West’s centuries-old dream of reducing Russia to the size of the medieval Principality of Moscow.

We will without a doubt complete the special military operation and crown it with its logical success: we will clinch a victory, and we will compel the Nazis to surrender (the audience rose, applauding and chanting “Russia! Russia!”).

After the speech Dimitry Medvedev took a number of questions from the audience. Answering them, he said among others:

– There is no return to the Soviet Union: you cannot enter twice the same river. Still, both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were made up of Great Russia, Little Russia (Northern Ukraine) and New Russia (Southern Ukraine), and these three ought to be reunited, ought to return home, making up one, indivisible territory.

– Russia is indifferent to who is going to be the next American president: US policy vis-a-vis Russia is not going to change.

– Negotiations with Ukraine are possible on condition that Ukraine has new leaders replacing the current comedian actor and his company, and on condition that Ukrainian authorities recognize the current political and military reality.

– War in Ukraine has forged the inhabitants of the Russian Federation into one nation. 

It was a few days ago that Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison. What a gift for the Western world, what a remarkable coincidence! With the fall of Avdiivka and the approaching presidential election in Russia, with the farmer protests that have shaken every other EU country, with the difficulties that the American president has getting yet another approval of by Congress for his financial aid for Ukraine, Alexei Navalny’s death is really a godsend. Of course all the media and commentators have shown themselves to be soothsayers: they all know for certain that Navalny was murdered. By Putin’s henchmen, no need to add. They all know it, the soothsayers that they are, no evidence is required. The consumers of the media, properly preconditioned for years, can only nod their heads in agreement.

In 2000, also in a prison, died Slobodan Milošević, Yugoslavia’s and then Serbia’s president. Nobody ever came up with the idea that he might have been murdered. God forbid! Slobodan Milošević was incarcerated in a democratic European Union, which honours human rights and is averse to deceit, violence, illegal methods of interrogation, injustice and the rest of it. Slobodan Milošević was justly brought to court because – unlike Navalny – he was the bad guy, who was responsible fully or partly as the case may be for no smaller a crime than genocide of Kosovars and Croats. Though Alexei Navalny according to his own words felt intense hatred towards non-Russians in Russia, which was familiar to anyone who only cared to listen to or read his statements, though because of that Alexei Navalny would have been termed as a white supremacist in the West, miraculously his controllers turned a blind eye to his political beliefs.

But then, do we wonder? Everything and anything is used – abused – misused – (choose the appropriate word) – to suit the managers of the world. Serbs needed to be bombed by NATO because they were reported to have murdered a number of Kosovars and Croats; Ukrainians, officially followers of the Stepan Bandera racist and chauvinist ideology need to be unconditionally supported by the collective West, which otherwise is oh so sensitive when other comes to nationalisms, racism, fascism and similar ideolo gies.

Alexei Navalny was a hugely inflated front man if ever there was one. Look up the English Wikipedia article about him and compare with that devoted to Vladimir Putin. Alexei Navalny, a man whose political popularity in Russia never exceeded 5% (five) enjoys a text of 78 PDF A4 pages, whereas Vladimir Putin, a recognized leader with huge popularity – 107. John Kennedy – one of the better known modern-age American presidents – has a mere 55 pages. Even John Paul II, the most popular and widely recognizable pope, is no match for Navalny: the Wiki article about him is 71 pages long.

Do you remember how Slobodan Milošević landed up in jail and how was Alexei Navalny imprisoned? The difference is striking and telling. Let us recall. Under the pressure from the collective West Slobodan Milošević, once he ceased performing the function of president of Serbia, was arrested by his own authorities, his own state and handed over to the Hague to stand trial there. How did Alexei Navalny end up in prison? Let us recall it. He happened to be in Russia where he was oh so unjustly prosecuted and persecuted, and one day he sank into a coma due to a poison administered to him by the notorious KGB (Russian equivalent of the American CIA), or at least that’s the official Western story. Navalny’s wife demanded that her husband be released to Germany for medical treatment and Vladimir Putin, the mad dictator that he is, let him leave Russia, knowing full well that his agents had bungled the operation of poisoning Navalny (obviously he was on the way of surviving) and knowing full well that German doctors – chemists – pharmacists – would find the traces of the substance that was to kill Navalny. Nevertheless the dissenter was released and cured of his poisoning in Germany, and of course German specialists found the traces of poison, didn’t they? Once cured, safe and sound, Alexei Navalny decided to return to Russia to be prosecuted and persecuted by the undemocratic regime. Why for heaven’s sake? To make things even more Hollywood-like, before returning to Russia, Navalny managed to produce a documentary which exposed Putin s a man who stashed away millions in order to build a palace for himself in the Crimea. Only after the film was made public and shown on YouTube did Alexei Navalny go back to Russia. What could he expect there? The really interesting question is: did Alexei Navalny really want to go back or was he made to? Did not the Russian authorities by letting him out of Russia show that they wanted to get rid of him rather than have him imprisoned? What was Navalny promised in return for agreeing to do time in prison? Who promised it?

You see, it was not so, as in Slobodan Milošević’s case, that the Russian government pressurized Germany to release Navalny. No. Navalny appears to have been a pawn in the hands of powerful players who traded his life for political benefits. He seemed to be useless in the West, but very useful inside Russia. A prisoner of conscience! Living evidence of the dictatorial and inhumane Kremlin authorities! That’s the message. That Navalny was sentenced for corruption and other acts of violating the law is not on the radar of the Western media. He was important as a card to be played and sacrificed if need be.

Slobodan Milošević was Serbia’s and formerly Yugoslavia’s patriot; Alexei Navalny was a traitor to Russia. Slobodan Milošević’s death was of course – how otherwise? – of natural causes; Alexei Navalny’s demise was of course – how otherwise? – murder in cold blood. End of story.