Putin's favorite novel, written by a Russian politician, predicted the invasion of Ukraine

Introduction to translation

Nothing occupies the world right now like reading the mind of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Why did he decide to invade Ukraine now?

What is his next step?

From where does he derive his visions and strategic moves?

This article highlights a novel that was popular among the Russian elite, written by a former member of the State Duma, in which he predicted many recent Russian moves, the most important of which was the invasion of Ukraine.

The most terrifying and exciting thing about the novel is that it clearly tells us that Ukraine is not the only or ultimate goal on Moscow's path to the "Third Empire".

translation text

None of us can read Putin's mind, but we can read the book that predicted the features of the Russian leader's imperial foreign policy. In 2006, the Russian writer Mikhail Yuryev wrote the novel "The Third Empire: Russia As It Should Be" and predicted with astonishing strategic accuracy. Russia in waging hybrid wars, and its recent military campaigns;

Including the Georgia war in 2008, the acquisition of Crimea in 2014, the military incursion into Donetsk and Lugansk, and then its ongoing invasion of Ukraine until now.

Like Putin's war in Ukraine, Yuryev's novel expresses the far-right anti-democratic and anti-Western ideology that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, and draws inspiration from it from the Middle Ages, with "Russian Orthodox civilization" assuming a dominant role in Europe and the United States.

The author, "Yuriev", is a businessman and a former member of the Russian parliament (Duma), who passed away in 2019, and was a member of the political council of the "Eurasia" party, which seeks a feudal social system on its throne with a political class that rules iron and fire.

The third empire novel

Putin and Yuryev knew each other, and it was rumored that the novel "The Third Empire" was so popular and influential in the political circles surrounding the Russian president, that the Russian newspaper "Vedomosti" described it as "the Kremlin's favorite book".

Russia 2054.. on the throne of the world

The novel consists of events narrated by a Brazilian historian starting in the year 2054, as the historian (the voice of the novel as chosen by "Yuriev") describes the Russian Renaissance launched by the renewed Russian leader "Vladimir II", and completed by his successor, "Gavril the Great".

According to the novel, the first empire is the state of the Russian czars (which ended with the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917), and the second empire is the Soviet Union.

The character of "Yusuf the Great" replaces the Soviet leader "Joseph Stalin", who praised "Yuriev" for the conquest of new lands and the crushing of the petty elites and the enemies of Russia at home, during the "Great Purge" campaigns undertaken by the Soviets in the 1930s, and they emigrated Through it entire peoples during and after the Second World War until some of them reached the mass death.

Over the past twenty years, the Kremlin has undertaken projects to restore the characteristics of that Stalinism, and to re-promote the defunct dictator as a competent administrator and a just, though brutal, ruler.

Putin is already using Stalin's tactics in the current war as well. The authorities in Mariupol have reported that Russian forces are forcibly displacing the city's residents.

(It should be noted that these Stalinist policies of ethnic displacement are rooted in Russia's methods used in Chechnya, as well as in Syria over the past ten years)*.

At the beginning of the novel “The Third Empire,” a pro-Russian uprising sponsored by the Kremlin erupts in Ukraine, which in turn seeks to “reunite with Russia, and reject the integration with the European Union imposed on the country (as the novel supposes)*, as well as the rejection of the anti-Russian NATO.”

That uprising leads to an undeclared war with the entry of Russian forces into Ukraine, and soon nine regions in the east and south of the country announce the withdrawal of their recognition of the Ukrainian authorities and belonging to the State of Ukraine, and the establishment of the “Donetsk and Black Sea Republic” loyal to Russia, and the regions are Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk and other areas under Russia's de facto control today.

The events of the novel continue with the holding of a referendum in that republic that results in “82% of the population voting in favor of joining Russia,” while 93% of Russians in Russia vote in favor of “the accession of eastern Ukraine to Russia.”

Perhaps it is no coincidence that during Russia's 2014 acquisition of Crimea and its incursion into Donetsk and Lugansk;

Russian forces adopted similar tactics in justifying the acquisition of Ukrainian land, claiming that it was initiated by the local population.

Since 2008, Putin has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine is "not a country at all", basing his reasoning on what was already planned by Yuryev's novel by one of its heroes, Gavriel, who "refused to recognize that Ukrainians and Belarusians are separate peoples from Russia", Gavriel sees that "attempts to define them as two separate races from the Russian race are only part of a centuries-old Western plan to destroy Russia."

Although "Yuriev" did not anticipate in his novel the crushing campaign of sanctions nor the united stand of Western countries in the face of the invasion, he did foresee Russia's readiness to practice nuclear blackmail.

In the novel, Russia wins World War III because of the West's fear of nuclear war, and "American leaders are already hesitant to launch a nuclear attack, while the Russians are ready to use it without retreat" (according to the novel's events)*.

Perhaps Putin is counting on Yuryev's foresight, as the Russian president has been threatening the world with his nuclear arsenal over the past few years.

For example, Putin said in 2018 that in the event of such a battle of annihilation, “the Russians will become victims and martyrs, and they will go to heaven,” and that the West, in turn, will only “crowd” and “will not have time to regret.”

Few are leaders who take the lives of their people with such outright disdain.

Between reality and fantasy

Yuriev's imagination has also spun how Europe's dependence on Russian energy exports has constrained its ability to further punish Russia.

Statements made by the protagonist, "Vladimir II", barely differ from Putin's current speeches. "We don't like you? We don't like you? We don't like you?" Oil and gas until we starve to death.” This is what the Brazilian historian, narrator of the novel, comments on, saying that the loss of Russian oil will raise prices and “slow down the European economy.”

Putin made a similar argument in 2014 for the scenario of Europe going without Russian oil and gas: "It would simply kill their competitiveness."

The man is right. German Chancellor Olaf Schulz has resisted international pressure to boycott Russian energy imports, and continues to explain their "extreme importance" to the European (and German at heart) economy*.

In his 2006 novel, Yuryev predicted that the Western response to the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine would be to appease the Russians, which is what actually happened in 2014, when scanty sanctions were imposed on Russia.

More importantly, Yuryev also expected that Russia would not stop at the partial annexation of Ukraine, which is proven by the events of the weeks-long invasion (although Russia has retreated from attacking Kyiv and Kharkiv by land at the present time, it remains committed to the goal of overthrowing the Zelensky administration and continues its attacks air over the capital)*.

In the midst of its attempts to stop the war and its concern about Russian aggression, Western countries may seek to pressure the Zelensky administration to accept some of Russia's conditions, something Yuryev also expected when he referred to Russia's ability to benefit from European diplomacy in the midst of the parallel events that it recounts. The novel, saying that "despite not officially recognizing Russia's annexation of eastern Ukraine, the dividing line that the two parties agreed not to cross has actually been established."

The pages of "Third Empire" chronicle the geopolitical ambitions of Russia that eventually compel the United States and the European Union to declare war.

Yuryev imagines that there is a secret weapon in Russia's possession that keeps it safe from nuclear attack, and then the Americans and Europeans finally surrender, and the world falls under the grip of Russian hegemony.

(Putin is already trying to change the logic of mutual nuclear deterrence in various ways by developing a hypersonic missile system that he himself explained in December 2018, saying that it is “impervious to missile and air defense systems of any potential enemy, and is an amazing gift to our country”).

The events of the novel reach their climax when a procession takes place in Red Square or Red Square in the capital, Moscow, as the leaders of the defeated countries are forced to walk in humiliation, including figures from the American political elite, “George Bush III,” the American president (in the events of the novel)* and former presidents “Bill.” Clinton and George Bush Jr., with US Congressional secretaries and legislators, bankers and industry workers, famous newspaper writers and television presenters, eminent judges, and famous models, pop singers, and Hollywood actresses.

All of them are walking in shackles, so that the Russians and the whole world know that Russia fought and did not win only over the American army, but over the entire American civilization.

With these imaginary scenes, "Yuriev" (who is not just a novelist but a member of Parliament, as mentioned above)* presents us with the way of thinking of Putin and many of those close to him about the West and Russia's neighboring countries.

Of course, Putin may not be looking forward to capturing Clinton with iron chains across Red Square, but the key here is that the war, if it succeeds in Ukraine, will not stop there, but will extend Russian power into Europe as much as possible.

Even if Russia's recent military retreat results in its military defeat in Ukraine, Putin might attack one of the Baltic states to undermine NATO, and Western peoples might decide not to risk World War III for the sake of a small country like Estonia.

And when NATO does not respond militarily to Russia's attack on one of its members, then the actual disintegration of the alliance may save the Putin regime (with its political victory)* in the midst of a possible failure to invade Ukraine.

Yuriev's novel is a fiction, of course, but it may help calculate the risks of appeasing Putin for Western politicians.

Understanding Russia's expansionist vision may play an important role in Western decisions regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, as Ukraine is not Putin's only goal in the end (as Yuryev's novel tells us, and before it - and more importantly - Putin's speeches and visions of those around him)*.

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* Comments from the translator.

This report has been translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily reflect the website of Meydan.