Historic view

A number of correspondents have discussed the historical geopolitical makeup of Russia and its connecting states. This is just a potted history to put it all into perspective.

We should first realise that Europe has been in perpetual war with itself and others ever since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. The last war preceding the current conflict was the fractious 1990s conflict in the Balkans.

In 1400 AD, Europe included: Spain/ Portugal (yet to fully oust the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula), France, England, the Holy Roman Empire spanning from northern Italy to the North Sea, Hungary, Poland, the Ottoman Empire and Muscovy.

Poland at this time covered a vast area, including the modern states of Belarus and Ukraine and reaching to some 200 kilometres west of Moscow.

Two hundred years of continual murderous European in-fighting left us: Spain and Portugal, France, Great Britain the Holy Roman Empire (mostly German-speaking peoples), Poland, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. Poland had not been politically strong enough to hold onto much of its Eastern territory and this was taken over by Russia.

Napoleon’s 12 years of French imperial power and land grab dismantled the centuries-old Holy Roman Empire, leaving the various bickering German states in a confederation before they were fully unified by Bismarck; Poland had shrunk considerably, impacted by a powerful Russian Empire.

Prior to the Great War of 1914, we had a unified Germany, a contracted Poland, White Russia (Belarus), Ukraine and Georgia as part of the expanded Russian Empire. The Ottomans had already been ousted from their long-time influence in the Balkans.

Another period of 12 years of Nazi domination and some 45 years of Soviet Russian domination left Europe as it is now, with a slightly larger Poland, having taken territory to its south, but having lost an eastern part to Belarus.

All the former defunct Soviet Uniondominated states: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus gained welcome independent status and a right to self-determination. The folk of Belarus it seems, like Russia, are kept silent under strict security and military force and biased, government-indoctrinated news.

These are the geopolitical facts of it, whatever the current political, military, social and security influences may be. NICK NICHOLSON