Taking Putin's ideas seriously (and I guess literally, too)

The denial of Ukraine is not an entirely erratic thought for the leader. Putin is espousing an irrational yet commonplace view widely held by Russian people and has been influential in Russian policy across various regimes and multiple centuries. In this instalment of Slow Boring, Matthew Yglesias looks at Russia’s longstanding denialism of its neighbour, Lenin’s Ukrainification of Ukraine. Here, he reflects on this nationalist myth and why it could give some much-needed clarity on the unstable actions of Vladimir Putin.