Russia

Peter the Great's testament starts with the sentence, “Russia should step forward and seize control of all assignments, disputes and contentions taking place in Europe.”

In the following lines of Peter the Great's testament it is advised that Russia should expand up to the Baltic in the north and down to shores of the Black Sea. When the original of the testament, currently in the Topkapı Palace, is examined, it isn't surprising to explain the historical Russo-Turkish wars with Peter's lines on “Russia's policy to go down to the warm seas.”

This testament, clearly indicates Peter the Great's intentions of taking over the regions under Ottoman reign and turning the Black Sea into an inland sea in order to hold together all Orthodox societies. This is obvious even to those who have any no knowledge on the issue.

Well this was the past. Is it any different today? I don't believe so.

Last year despite the U.S. and EU regarding it illegal, Russian President Vladimir Putin not only annexed Crimea, a country on the Black Sea shores, with a referendum, but settled in Syria using the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as an excuse to move down to the Mediterranean. Russia's search for petrol and gas in the Mediterranean isn't a state secret either.

I would also like to remind that the Russian Orthodox Church confirmed that Russia settling into Syria as if it were its backyard was “a holy war.” Christian countries, including Orthodox, Catholic and Protestants, regarding the invasion of Muslim lands as “holy” is another issue to be debated. But I believe the source of Putin's courage is more important.

As, when you look closely, you cannot see anything beyond Peter the Great in Putin, and the Tsarist Russia in current day Russia...

It seems that there is a reproduction of the “moving into warm seas” notion through Crimea being annexed by Russia in 2014, a reproduction of Russia's expansion into Ottoman lands through settling into Syria in the pretext of fighting ISIL, and a reproduction of the Orthodox Churches' notion of nationalism and politics and religion through the “Holy War” statement.

If this wasn't the case, despite the collapse of autocracy after the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism coming in place, and continuing for 74 years, the Russian Orthodox government's expansionism – being totally wrongful – would not have been stamped out rather than reinforced as “holy.”

At this point, I recognize the claims that Russia can never be a democratic country at Western standards, despite it going through the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution or the Perestroika and Glasnost periods, and experiencing democracy from time to time, and the modernization of its peasant-like society, which had always been governed under autocratic regimes...

When Russia's interests are the point in question, Putin overlooks mutual human values and international balances and walks toward his objective rashly, therefore I understand those who believe there is a return to the self instead of progress in Russia's case.

Russia, still is Peter the Great's country...