The Russian Ethnos, Empire, and Ukraine

by Santander Wallaby

Santander Wallaby on a Ukrainian general's account of Russian history that reveals less about the past it claims to describe than about the ideological vision through which the conflict between empire and nation is now understood.

Konstantin Malofeev, Russian businessman and founder of Tsargrad TV, finds an unexpected window into the ideological foundations of contemporary Ukraine in a recent interview with the newly appointed commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who previously led the Kherson operational grouping responsible for operations along the lower Dnieper River in southern Ukraine. That commander, Mikhail Drapaty, spoke with unusual openness about the Russian people and the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, the industrial heartland known as the Donbass. Malofeev treats the interview as a revealing document of contemporary identity and as an invitation to examine the deeper historical currents that shape the Russian ethnos and the idea of empire.