{"id":131116,"date":"2025-03-24T10:58:53","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T10:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/putin-wants-us-recognition-of-russian-gains-in-ukraine-historian-al-jazeera-english\/"},"modified":"2025-03-24T10:58:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T10:58:53","slug":"putin-wants-us-recognition-of-russian-gains-in-ukraine-historian-al-jazeera-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/putin-wants-us-recognition-of-russian-gains-in-ukraine-historian-al-jazeera-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin wants US \u2018recognition\u2019 of Russian gains in Ukraine: Historian – Al Jazeera English"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian-British historian Sergey Radchenko talks to Al Jazeera about Moscow\u2019s desire for \u2018Great Power\u2019 status on the world stage.<\/em>
Whether in the form of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation today, the occupants of the Kremlin have been driven by a desire to be recognised as a \u201cGreat Power\u201d.
These ambitions are explored by Russian-British historian Sergey Radchenko in his book To Run the World: The Kremlin\u2019s Cold War Bid for Global Power.
Radchenko spoke to Al Jazeera about Moscow\u2019s need for legitimacy on the world stage and the role it played in Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.
Al Jazeera: Given the hostility between Moscow and the West, could we be living in another Cold War?<\/strong>
Sergey Radchenko:<\/strong> The Cold War had two powers that were opposed to one another. One was the Soviet Union, one was the United States. In today\u2019s environment, we have something that resembles that competition, but it is between the United States and China, ie, peer competitors, not Russia.
As much as Putin would like to argue that it is, Russia is not really<\/a> in the same league as China and the United States.
And during the Cold War, there was a clear juxtaposition between these two rival camps \u2013 the capitalist world and the socialist world. Today, it seems that in some ways, the United States, certainly under President [Donald] Trump, and Russia have more of an alignment<\/a> than a contradiction of values. We no longer hear about democracy versus autocracy.
But there are also continuities, and the key continuity seems to be the\u00a0presence of nuclear weapons<\/a>. They inevitably remain as a\u2026 major part of the picture.
Al Jazeera: To what extent does desire for recognition drive the Kremlin\u2019s politics?<\/strong>
Radchenko:<\/strong> This is the biggest continuity, I think, between the Cold War and the post-Cold War. I argue that foreign policies of the Soviet Union, China and Russia today are driven above all by the desire to be recognised as legitimate Great Powers. You could see that throughout the Soviet Cold War \u2013 they wanted recognition of their status as a co-equal superpower with similar rights as those of the United States. What they derived from such recognition is legitimacy, and sometimes they were willing to make compromises.
This was even true of [Soviet leader Josef] Stalin. People have said all sorts of things about Stalin, many of which are true, about him being a hideous dictator and somebody who was deeply cynical, manipulative\u2026 [But] even for Stalin, smaller gains, but with American recognition, were better than bigger gains without American recognition. He withheld support from the communists in the Greek civil war until 1947 because there was an agreement with the British that Greece was in the British sphere of influence.
So that principle of external recognition, especially American recognition of Soviet gains, I think that continued over and spilled over to Russian foreign policy. If you look at Putin\u2019s foreign policy today, what does he want above all? He wants American recognition of Russian gains in Ukraine as legitimate. He\u2019s obsessed with this idea. He feels like he can decide the fate of Ukraine<\/a> over the heads of the Ukrainians and the Europeans precisely because he doesn\u2019t care about them. He cares about America granting him the status of a co-equal Great Power.
Al Jazeera: What does this Great Power worldview look like?<\/strong>
Radchenko:<\/strong> It\u2019s very much a 19th-century vision of Russia as a Great Power at the centre of its own sphere of influence where it can project its power onto its neighbours. Soviet leaders also thought of countries immediately next to the Soviet Union as lying within their sphere of influence \u2013 Stalin was a 19th century imperialist.
What made them think that they\u2019re so entitled? In 1963, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev met with [Cuban leader] Fidel Castro in the context of the Sino-Soviet split. Castro asked him, \u2018Why are you quarrelling with the Chinese?\u2019
\u2018They want to play the first fiddle\u2019, Khruschev replied.
In a company of friends, someone is recognised as a leader and it happens naturally, by virtue of superior qualities\u2026 That\u2019s how Khrushchev felt the Soviet Union deserved to be a Great Power and the leader of the socialist camp, because it was just better than anybody else and deserved it. It makes almost no sense to ask why \u2013 they just do, right?
Putin, in many ways, continues this tradition.\u00a0When they feel others deny it to them, they have then the responsibility to\u00a0assert this claim to greatness through violence.\u00a0And this is what we have with Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. Countries that fall into that sphere of influence must defer to the Kremlin\u2019s\u00a0wishes, and if somebody doesn\u2019t, like Ukraine, that provides a reason to punish them in order to show the others their\u00a0place.<\/p>\n

Thinking more globally, obviously if Russia is entitled to its sphere of influence, you\u2019d think that other Great Powers also are allowed theirs. And it\u2019s here that Putin has some parallel thinking with Trump. You can see that immediately in Trump\u2019s rhetoric about the Panama Canal<\/a>, Canada<\/a> as the 51st state, the way that he\u2019s talked about Greenland<\/a> \u2013\u00a0all of that implies that he thinks of the Western Hemisphere as basically America\u2019s playground.
During the Cold War, any challenge to America\u2019s global interests was seen as potentially significant. Whether they happened in Vietnam, in Afghanistan [or] Africa, all of that mattered for the United States because they were engaged in this global struggle for influence with the Soviet Union. Even in West Berlin, far away from America, surrounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany, the Americans were willing to go to the brink of a nuclear war to defend their right to remain there.
Today, it seems like Trump\u2019s vision is something else. America\u2019s interests are no longer global.
Al Jazeera: How does one distinguish between Great Powers and \u201clesser\u201d nations?<\/strong>
Radchenko:<\/strong> America was mainly the Great Power that it naturally wanted to be recognised by. But gradually and reluctantly, they also came to recognise China as having an almost natural right to be a Great Power.
But at the same time, they formed a very negative view of many European countries, a feeling that their age has already passed. They concluded during and after the Second World War that Europe was a spent force. For a time, they thought that maybe Great Britain could also somehow be a Great Power in Europe, but that impression faded away once it became clear that Britain was just an island out there and not an empire that is able to assert its imperial greatness, for example, during the Suez Crisis.
Although even today you have a bit of an obsession in Russia with \u201cAnglo-Saxons\u201d, like there\u2019s some kind of a devious plot<\/a> to return the UK to a Great Power status.
Al Jazeera: Russia has numerous social problems. Why not spend this energy improving Russians\u2019 lives?<\/strong>
Radchenko:<\/strong> A country that has been historically conditioned to think of itself as a Great Power, precisely by virtue of being dominant over its weaker neighbours, defines greatness through that lens. In other words, they only feel great when they\u2019re able to dominate others \u2013 that then highlights Russia\u2019s greatness in the eyes of many Russians. And I think they will prioritise that over almost anything else.
One of the things that happened in the Soviet Union was that, ultimately, that bargain did not hold. The Soviets claimed that they were a Great Power but they were absolutely unable to deliver for their own people.
Today, Russia is trying to strike a balance: on the one hand, projecting this imperial greatness and selling it to its own people; on the other hand, there\u2019s still toilet paper. And yes, the quality of life is not as high as it could have been if Russia focused on its own internal problems and did not wage wars against neighbours. But it\u2019s not a dire situation like in the USSR. So that allows for greater resilience than the Soviet model.
Editor\u2019s note: This interview was lightly edited for clarity and brevity.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Follow Al Jazeera English:<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russian-British historian Sergey Radchenko talks to Al Jazeera about Moscow\u2019s desire for \u2018Great Power\u2019 status on the world stage.Whether in the form of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation today, the occupants of the Kremlin have been driven by a desire to be recognised as a \u201cGreat Power\u201d.These ambitions are explored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131117,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}