this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Ukraine’s president says Kremlin checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies following new drone sightings

Vladimir Putin will expand his war in Ukraine by attacking another European country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has predicted, and accused Russia of recent drone incursions that he said were an attempt to test Nato’s defences.

Speaking in Kyiv after his meeting with Donald Trump at the UN in New York, the Ukrainian president said Russia was preparing for a bigger conflict. “Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that,” he said.

Ukraine’s president said the Kremlin was deliberately checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies, after drone sightings in Denmark, Poland and Romania and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets. More drones were spotted on Friday night above a Danish military base, and over a Norwegian base on Saturday.

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[–] NeilBru@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Putin has modeled his rule after the Csarist monarchy of the Russian Empire. He notably despises communism and blames it for the collapse of the USSR. He calls himself "president" but many within the state Duma believe the title to be an embarrassing western descriptor and would prefer to bestow on him the title of "pravitel" or "ruler".

But Putin ran into a bit of a problem. Just as to be called Caesar you need to rule Rome, to be called czar you need to rule over all of Rus. For him, the cultural, historical, and religious significance of Kievan Rus was just too large to be ignored.

When it existed, the Russian Empire tried to erase the other eastern Slavic languages from their shared cultural memory. They acted as if there was no Ukraine and never had been, just as with Belarus. According to the Tsarists, Ukrainians had always been Russians and had no history of their own. The Ukrainian and Belorussian languages were banned. Ukrainian nationalism was a threat to the underlying myths of Russia and threatened the czars' attempts at creating an “All-Russian People.”

Putin is emulating their rule and presents himself as a tsar-like figure. He’s built a massive, opulent palace for himself, with gold-plated double-headed eagles, a clear Imperial Russian symbol, everywhere—even in his personal strip club. Similarly, the Russian Orthodox Church helps him pacify the population and supports whatever myths Kremlin wants to glorify. He wanted to go down in the history books as a grand unifier of Russian lands—if not under the same government, then definitely as the hegemon of the Russian world.

Putin wants it both ways, to take credit for the Soviet legacy and, at the same time, be viewed in the same light as the emperors and czars of old. Therefore, he's had to bring back and reaffirm the old, imperial myths and values—and to do that, he has to get Kyiv under his thumb. After all, it was the restored Kievan Rus that became Russia, the "Third Rome." Ukraine going its own way, claiming Kievan Rus as its legacy, moving away from Moscow, getting autocephaly for its own orthodox church—all this runs contrary to Russian state mythology.

These imperial myths are what define Russia, what it even means to be a Russian. Without them, Russia just stops being Russia in the eyes of many. Putin is convinced that if this social glue is disrupted, then Russia will just split up in pieces again—and if he allows that to happen, then his legacy is ruined. For him, there can be no separate Ukrainian language, culture, or history. That is where his mind is at, stuck in the 18th and 19th centuries.

[–] Skiluros@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

Agreed, yes the strip club part of the palace was funny in many ways.

And the best option forward for everyone involved (including the russia) is to decolonize/end the russian empire.