Vladimir Putin has made his ambition plain: to reconstitute Imperial Russia at any cost. On the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great’s birth, Putin compared himself to the tsar who expanded Russia’s reach into Europe, insisting:
He didn’t seize anything. He was taking it back… and it looks like it fell to us, too, to take back and strengthen.”
Like his idol, Putin views conquest not as aggression, but as restoration. He also knows that imperialism is the way to stay in power. The machinery of repression, the myth of historical destiny, and the spectacle of war all serve one purpose: to keep him on the throne, and ensure his legacy.
What’s at stake in Ukraine is the idea that borders are sacred, democracy is legitimate, and tyranny cannot simply march westward with tanks and lies. In a recent Financial Times editorial, Martin Wolf issued a stark warning:
As in the 1930s, the decisions made now could shape the future of the continent and even of the world for generations. I am not optimistic. But of one thing I am sure: if democratic Europe cannot act in concert now, it is doomed.”
And yet: Most of Europe seems dangerously unready.
Consider Finland, a country of just 5.5 million people. It maintains universal conscription, a trained wartime reserve of over 900,000, and a national ethos built on vigilance. Helsinki alone has enough civil defense shelters to protect its entire population.
Now compare that to the United Kingdom, where the active-duty armed forces have shrunk so drastically that, as one MP put it, “the entire British military could now fit into Wembley Stadium.” There are no civil defense shelters. Ammunition stockpiles are threadbare. Defense production lines move at peacetime speeds.
Many in Europe still live under the illusion that the Ukraine war is distant, contained, and exceptional. But it’s not. Only our collective amnesia is.
Russia has fought its way westward for centuries—against Poles, Swedes, Finns, Germans, Brits, French, Austrians, Turks, Hungarians, and Balts. Here's a sampling:
