Any doubts about Kremlin’s intentions have been put to rest by Putin’s cronies. Consider Dmitry Medvedev. A former Russian president who now serves as deputy chairman of the National Security Council, he has declared that a sovereign Ukraine “is not needed by anyone on the planet,” and therefore will cease to exist once Russia is done with it.

Medvedev argues that Ukraine is made up of “artificially cut territories, many of which are indigenously Russian, separated by accident in the twentieth century.” His conclusion is stark: “We don’t need unterukraine. We need Big Great Russia.” Such unhinged rhetoric would not be tolerated if it did not reflect the position of Putin.

Medvedev’s “Big Great Russia” did exist at one point. Others at the time called it by a different name: “the prison of nations.” Following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania seized the opportunity to secure their independence. And though Ukrainians aspired to do the same, they were crushed by the Bolshevik violence.

To treat Kremlin’s clearly articulated project of recreating Big Great Russia as a “territorial dispute” is a misjudgment of historic proportions. Russia has violated another UN member state’s territorial integrity in an effort to wipe it off the map. To allow  Kremlin to benefit from this grave offense against international peace could undermine the global order. The core principles upon which the UN rests are being directly challenged, and in a way that will open the door for other states with imperial ambitions to swallow their smaller neighbors. We risk descending into a world ruled by the law of the jungle, where might makes right.

DeSantis and any other politician who doubts that the West has an interest in Ukraine’s future should reflect on what is really at stake. They would do well to read Medvedev and other Russian leaders’ statements on the matter, lest they fall into the same trap as the appeasers of the late 1930s.

This is no territorial dispute. This is a war for the world order as we know it.

Carl Bildt is a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023.