The expansionist tendencies of the current Russian regime indicate its intentions for the realisation of a Greater Russia on the lines of the Soviet era. Comment. (2024, 10 Marks)
From Georgia (2008) to Crimea (2014) and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has redrawn borders by force. Whether this is imperial reconstitution or a defensive reaction to Western encroachment is contested. The evidence supports revisionism, but a “Soviet-era” restoration overstates it.
The case for a “Greater Russia” project
- Stated grievance. In April 2005 Putin called the Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”, stressing the millions of Russians stranded outside the Federation.
- Doctrine. The Russkiy Mir idea and the duty to protect “compatriots abroad” license intervention wherever Russian speakers live. Putin’s July 2021 essay on the “historical unity” of Russians and Ukrainians denied Ukraine separate nationhood.
- Conduct. Moscow recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia (2008), annexed Crimea (March 2014), recognised the Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” on 21 February 2022, invaded three days later and proclaimed the annexation of four regions that September. It holds about a fifth of Ukraine, and a US-drafted 28-point plan (November 2025) would have ceded it more territory and barred Ukraine from NATO. The Eurasian Economic Union and CSTO serve as integration vehicles.
The defensive or realist reading
- John J. Mearsheimer (Foreign Affairs, 2014) blames a three-pronged Western strategy: drawing Ukraine into NATO, the EU and liberal democracy. The 2008 Bucharest promise that Ukraine and Georgia “will become” members crossed Moscow’s brightest red line, making alignment an existential threat; without enlargement, he argues, Crimea would still be Ukrainian.
- Putin himself quipped that missing the USSR shows a heart, but wanting it back shows a lack of brains: nostalgia, not a blueprint. Occupying and governing all of Ukraine was never demonstrably feasible or desirable.
Why “Soviet era” overstates it
- The project is ethno-civilisational, not ideological: no communist mission, no claim on Central Asia, no rival world order.
- The sphere is shrinking. Kazakhstan refuses to recognise the annexations; Armenia froze CSTO participation in 2024, and in August 2026 Nikol Pashinyan said he would welcome expulsion; Finland and Sweden joined NATO.
Conclusion
Expansionism is real, but its aim is a sphere of influence over the “near abroad”, above all Ukraine and Belarus, not a restored USSR. Security grievance explains why policy hardened; revisionist nationalism explains its territorial form. India, which abstained on the February 2026 UNGA resolution and whose Prime Minister told Putin in September 2022 that “today’s era is not of war”, shows the limits of strategic autonomy when a partner redraws borders by force.