In August 1968, when Russian tanks invaded Prague, supposedly to answer the call of a people who wanted to be liberated from a deviant socialist government, there was a joke: “What are they doing here ? They are looking for those who called them! In February 2022, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were massed with weapons and baggage all around Ukraine “for military exercises”, before receiving – surprise! — the order to invade the country to liberate it from a clique of menacing Nazis.
Now, apparently, captured Russian soldiers confessed that they did not really know what they were doing there: obviously, the supposed enemy represented no threat and the people to be saved were in no way oppressed. So what, all this gigantic and criminal deployment simply serves to satisfy the nostalgic delirium of a little spy with big ambitions? Mr. Putin wants to rediscover the greatness of Russia, but in doing so he may be mistaken in tradition: the real greatness of Russia is not that of Stalin, the gulags, state terrorism, but rather that great musicians, great writers, mathematicians, all those Nobel Prize winners in medicine, physics, chemistry, etc.
Russia, in addition to being the guardian of a territory of incomparable richness in terms of nature and culture, could shine so much by contributing to the well-being of humanity and by putting its enormous human capital at the service of the most pressing and important causes, such as global warming, food security for all, the fight against COVID, knowledge of the universe.
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