So the difference is not whether they’re trying to be imperialists, but in their relative ability to do so. I’m sure there’s some fascinating and useful graduate level historical analysis to be done in understanding why Russification was relatively unsuccessful, but that doesn’t change the fact that Russia has time and again attempted to impose Russian culture, Russian language, and Russian law on parts of the Russian empire that were very happily doing their own thing.
Right.
Russia’s immense respect for Ukrainian culture has defined this war