Vladimir Putin’s Terrifying Alternate History

By all accounts, Russian president Vladimir Putin is obsessed with history. That was apparent in Putin’s two-hour-long interview with former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson.

Russia’s autocratic president spent the first hour dragging his interlocutor along a languid tour of Russia’s history, beginning at the first East Slavic state in 862 and continuing into the modern era, with many detours along the way. Just as he did at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin dwelled on Kyivan Rus, the Tartar Yoke, the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, Catherine the Great’s conquest of the Black Sea coast, the establishment of special access to the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and the Pereiaslav Agreement — all to legitimize Russia’s claims to the whole of Ukraine. He might have expounded on the various Dmitrys and False Dmitrys who glut Russian history books. Perhaps as a courtesy in acknowledgment of his audience’s rapidly diminishing patience, he elided that bit.