Edit: I didn't post the following quotes to say he's a communist. He's pivoting to centre-left positions with his rhetoric and 6 year plan. He called for reducing poverty by 2% in 6 years and for progressive taxation on the rich.
The true elite are all those serving Russia. Workers and soldiers, reliable, trustable, who have proven their devotion to Russia, the worthy people.
“The very word ‘elite’ has largely been discredited by those who, having no merit to society, consider themselves to be some kind of a caste with special rights and privileges. I specifically mean those who, in previous years, filled their pockets through all sorts of processes in the economy of the 1990s. Those are definitely not the elite,” the president said.
Calling him a revanchist is falling entirely for western lies. Reactionary, yes (being a lib, and his "conservative" politics), but even then it's rather dishonest to group him in with the typical racists, revanchists, imperialists, ultranationalists, warmongering neocons, and economic neolibs.
Anyone with sense can see that if anything- his hand was forced in Ukraine, after repeated naive attempts at peace and trying to negotiate semi-autonomy and basic rights for the ethnic, indigenous Russians in the region. That's not revanchism- if anything, the opposite.
I have generally found your comments as a great contribution, however I would contest any statement that indicates Indigenous peoples in Russia enjoy a generative relationship with the state. It's possible you only meant "Russians" by your statement, but then that is potentially seen as a nationalist statement that erases Indigenous peoples and prioritizes a specific group of Russian peoples.
As far as I've seen- indigenous people do seem to have a generative relationship with the Russian state, though. The history of Russia ultimately derives from imperial Russia (though even then their methods of managing indigenous peoples tended to differ considerably from that of the west Europeans and Anglo-colonials), yes, but the relations with indigenous peoples in the present day are inherited from the Soviet Union instead, with the state organized as a federation with various constituent republics and other entities- and to my understanding, similarly to China, the indigenous semi-autonomy that these entities receive is substantial, and incomparable to the treatment of indigenous peoples and most ethnic minorities in any Anglo or western country.
Modern Russia has many issues, but to my awareness its treatment of indigenous peoples is not one of them (FWIW I'm not Russian and have never been to Russia, though- I only know what I've heard or read online to go on). Even the various marginal Siberian tribes have their own republics and oblasts and seem to have considerable leeway in determining their own domestic policies. The Chechen republic in particular is notorious for their reactionary Islamic governance and extremely homophobic policies (I'm not sure to what extent the claims of concentration camps for gay men are true, but let's just say that things are bad- and no, it's obvious on the other hand the rest of Russia is not remotely similar), and even have their own military/paramilitary units who are presently involved in Ukraine.
That said- my statement wasn't referring to the indigenous peoples of Russia- not out of neglect, but simply because they weren't the subject of discussion at the moment. My description of "ethnic, indigenous Russians in the region (Ukraine, and/or former eastern Ukraine)" was in regards to Putin's attempts at negotiating protections and semi-autonomy for Russo-Ukranians in the Minsk accords and the 2022 peace deal made in Istanbul- specifically, I was calling those Russian minorities "ethnic, indigenous Russians" because they are literally, undeniably indigenous to much of the territory within the borders of modern Ukraine (as are the Ukranians- and the Tatars, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, and many other groups), and the persecutions and suppression they were facing as such was the persecution of an indigenous people.
I mean he definitely sees Ukraine as part of Russia, and I didn't mean that in the way you assume I did but in the very literal sense. I meant that part as a neutral statement, national boundries and border lines shifting outside my control really doesn't concern me.
If Putin had wanted the Donbass part of Ukraine, he wouldn’t have given them back to Ukraine via Minsk and stupidly waited 8 years to realize that the Ukrainian fascists had no intention of honoring Minsk at all.
Giving back Crimea is out of the question for any Russian leader, left or right, but Putin clearly didn’t want to deal with the shit happening in Donbass. It was the communists who continued to materially aid the Donbass militias and citizens throughout the entire truce period.
The Ukrainian fascist coup regime refused to honor Minsk because it explicitly forbade them from committing ethnic cleansing in the region. Apart from that, they were not going to lose anything apart from Crimea. It was an exceedingly generous peace terms from Russia.
By refusing to honor Minsk and continuing the genocide, they literally forced Russia to intervene militarily. I guarantee you that if Russia had been run by socialists, they would have taken actions against Ukraine far sooner than Putin would have.
I agree with all of that I was just saying that putin is no champion of the workers that his rhetoric in this story implies...
This I agree with you.
I think it's not accurate, but to be fair I think it's also falling for Putin's own lies, since he loves revanchist rhetoric