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‘A justified perception of Russian interests’ Unearthed German memo reveals Putin laid claim to parts of Ukraine and Kazakhstan back in 1994

Source: Meduza

Vladimir Putin has long claimed that Russia’s border “does not end anywhere.” According to a newly unearthed memo from Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the future Russian president advocated this concept as far back as 1994. The document, which was first reported by the German news site Der Spiegel, reveals that during his time as the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Putin told the German consul general that Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and northern Kazakhstan “have always been a part of Russian land.”

As reported by Der Spiegel, the memo outlining this exchange surfaced in a volume of archival documents from the German Foreign Office, which was published last month. In the memo, dated January 14, 1994, Consul General Eberhard von Puttkamer quotes Putin as saying,

The diplomat also noted that this was something Putin repeated “with emphasis” while claiming that he was echoing national sentiment.  

According to the memo, Putin went on to explain that there would be “no problems” if the economic and social situation were satisfactory for Russians living in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. However, he argued that this was not the case, and added that the West would be “ill-advised to label what is merely a justified perception of Russian interests as a resurgence of Russian imperialism.” 

Eberhard von Puttkamer was the German Consul General in St. Petersburg from 1991 to 1995. He passed away in 2019. At the time of the conversation quoted in the memo, Putin was serving as St. Petersburg’s deputy mayor and head of the office’s Committee for External Relations.

Putin’s boss at the time, St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, had previously questioned the international borders that emerged from the Soviet Union’s collapse. In 1992, Sobchak argued that the USSR’s founding republics (the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian SSRs, as well as the Transcaucasian SFSR) should return to their pre-Soviet borders, while “all other territorial acquisitions” should be subject to “discussions, negotiations, and decision-making.”

Sobchak also considered it “absurd” that Crimea was part of Ukraine, and claimed that Ukraine should be prevented from establishing its own army because it would “certainly make use of it.” 

Putin, who has described the late Sobchak as a teacher and friend, cited his former boss’s stance on post-Soviet borders in his infamous 2021 essay on the “historical unity” of Russians and Ukrainians. The Russian president has also erroneously claimed that modern-day Ukraine owes its existence to Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and declared that Crimea “was always” part of Russia. 

Putin has also claimed that Kazakhstan was created by its first post-Soviet leader, President Nursultan Nazarbayev. “He [Nazarbayev] did something unique. He established a state on a territory where one had never existed before. The Kazakhs had no statehood,” Putin said in 2014. 

Other Russian politicians have repeated this rhetoric. In 2020, State Duma lawmaker Vyacheslav Nikonov claimed that “the territory of Kazakhstan was a great gift from Russia and the Soviet Union.” The assertion prompted a response from Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev himself. “Our sacred land, inherited from our ancestors, is our main wealth. No outside force gave the Kazakhs this huge territory,” Tokayev said. “History should be studied by historians, not politicians.” 

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