Ivan Krastev

Ivan Krastev is chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a permanent fellow at the IWM (Institute of Human Sciences) in Vienna.

Putin is trying to annexe people, not just land

On 1 September 2021, six months before his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was speaking at the All-Russian Children’s Centre, known as ‘Ocean’, near the harbour city of Vladivostok. He turned to a topic that obviously haunted him during his long Covid-19 isolation. He told his audience of children that Russia’s population could have