Russian historian Sergei Medvedev said this Wednesday that Ukraine was “just one step” for Vladimir Putin to provoke a “Third World War,” warning that the future of the world was at stake.
“It is necessary that the world, the countries of NATO and the EU realize that we are facing a Third World War and that (Ukraine) is not a regional conflict on the outskirts of Europe, because the future of Europe is at stake. and the future of the world,” said Medvedev, 57, a Russian historian and scholar in exile since 2020 and author of The Return of the Russian Leviathan.
“Make no mistake. This (Ukrainian war) is not a war for the replenishment of the imperial time, it is not a post-colonial war and not a geopolitical intervention, like many in the world. For Russia, this is, in fact, a world war. It may be difficult to understand in 2023, but we must understand that in Putin’s mind, this is the “Third World War,” says the historian and university professor in Prague and Riga.
For a historian, Vladimir Putin has been preparing for this conflict for at least 15 years, ever since his speech at the Munich Conference in which he declared that Russia “betrayed the West” because of the expansion of the Atlantic alliance.
The campaign launched by Russia in February 2022 in Ukraine is a pretext or “training zone” because, he claims, for Putin, Russia’s target is the West.
“It is about the will to establish a new world order. Russia feels that it belongs to the group of great powers of the modern world and that it was excluded from the world order after 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, after the fall of Berlin and the end of the Warsaw Pact,” he said.
According to the historian, in Putin’s view, Russia should be a power, along with the European bloc, the United States and the People’s Republic of China, and “should be one of the key countries in building the modern world.”
During a conference at the Concordia Club, the historian said that Putin knows that Russia has neither economic power, nor a strong socio-economic model, nor military power, but, nevertheless, Russia has “the power of fear, the power of chaos and the strength destruction.”
“Russia does not have the ability to help build peace, but it does have the ability to destroy the world, sow the seeds of chaos, destroy pipelines, use chemical weapons, destroy communications, start “proxy wars” that can hit markets and the global economy and cause inflation to rise. , – he said.
Thus, the Russian scientist believes, the challenges of 1945 can be “compared”, because the “peace” did not fully solve the problems posed at the end of World War II.
“We have to finish the job because 1945 is a work in progress. At that time there were two totalitarian dictatorships (fascist and Soviet) and only one was defeated (fascist Germany), while the other survived, continued and is now being revived in the traditional way, ”he said, emphasizing that“ the world ”must defeat the second dictatorship, referring to Russia.
“Only then can we be confident in the future,” he stressed.
At the conference “Can the history of Russia explain the context for understanding the invasion of Ukraine, or is the war a different phenomenon?” Organized by the Viennese press club Concordia, which Lusa accompanied remotely, the academician also declared that the post-Soviet era ended with the last invasion of Ukrainian territory and that one of Russia’s “evils” is the maintenance of the capital in Moscow.
“If you think about the future, then you need to think about post-Moscow Russia, that is, Moscow should no longer be the capital. This is one of the roots of evil. Moscow is the capital of Eurasia, it is not a European capital. This is the capital of Europe. Northern Eurasia,” Medvedev said.
Regarding the Russian capital, the historian added that Russia is the only modern country – with industrial potential and nuclear forces and a member of the UN Security Council – that is ruled from a medieval castle.
“Power is exercised from the Kremlin. You sit in a 15th century castle and look out over the world from the battlements of a castle built for defense. Therefore, the authorities must leave the Kremlin to be located elsewhere, in central Russia (…) Even China is no longer ruled from the Forbidden City, ”he said.
Sergei Medvedev is preparing an investigation “War in Russia” to be published in Europe by Polity Press in the coming months.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.