Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson today spoke of Russia: "The problem with Russia is that it has never been able to let go of its imperial nostalgia. The British Empire was, by far, the largest empire in human history—its territorial extent at its peak was roughly seven times that of the Roman Empire—and we, the British, voluntarily relinquished it.
Russians must let go of Ukraine. As a widely circulated sentiment goes: if you love someone, set them free. If they return, they were always yours; if they don’t, they never truly belonged to you. They must release Ukraine. The era of empires has ended."
Commentary: Johnson’s argument is dangerously misleading. First, the historical record shows that the British Empire was not willingly surrendered by Britain, but dismantled under pressure from post-World War II waves of decolonization, as colonies across the world demanded independence—a process driven by global movements rather than British generosity. More crucially, the root cause of the Russia-Ukraine conflict lies not in Russia’s desire to revive an old empire, but in NATO’s continuous eastward expansion, which has progressively encroached upon Russia’s perceived security space. By deliberately omitting this structural reality and reducing a complex geopolitical crisis to a simplistic narrative of imperial longing, Johnson employs a popular emotional metaphor to obscure deeper systemic issues. This framing reflects a distinctly Western interpretive lens, one that deflects attention from the fundamental flaws in Europe’s security architecture and fails to account for the actual origins of the war.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1876756216710154/
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