- Putin has relied on historical borders to argue that Ukraine is part of Russia, justifying the war.
- Mongolia’s former president shared a map of the Mongol Empire, which included parts of Russia.
- “After Putin’s talk. I found Mongolian historic map. Don’t worry. We are a peaceful and free nation,” he wrote.
The former president of Mongolia mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend and his focus on history to try to justify his invasion of Ukraine.
Putin has frequently used historical borders to justify his brutal invasion, arguing that Russia has a claim over Ukraine even though Ukraine is an independent country.
In his interview with Tucker Carlson last week, Putin outlined centuries of Russian and European history to justify his invasion. Historians say much of the history he gave doesn’t stand up.
Tsakhia Elbegdorj, who was Mongolia’s president between 2009 and 2017, and was also its prime minister, poked fun at Putin’s argument on X.
Edit: not sure what’s going on with these markdown links. I’ll try to work it out
Wikimedia Commons users to the rescue! For the top five largest empires in history:
British empire. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British\_empire.png which benefits substantially due to some very short-lived occupations like Ethiopia and the southern two thirds of Somalia after pushing Italy out during WW2
Mongol empire never held anything that it didn’t have at its territorial peak, so that one is easy
Russian empire. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The\_Russian\_Empire-en.svg I honestly had no idea about Djibouti, and by the sounds of it it was more one mad Russia guy and his mates who were soon kicked out by the French navy
Qing dynasty. I’m pretty sure this one is also the same as its territorial peak, but it’s much harder to check due to the far longer history than the Mongol empire. Light green on this map is claims which were never actually controlled.
Spanish empire. This one is horrendously complicated since it includes the Iberian Union with Portugal and Portugal’s colonies at the time, and also the Holy Roman Empire, southern Italy, and the Netherlands due to Charles V and the other Habsburgs. It also includes Louisiana (as in the area of the Louisiana Purchase, not the modern US state), as well as large claimed areas that were not meaningfully controlled like the interior of Brazil or the Pacific Northwest of North America. This is certainly the biggest proportional increase, with Louisiana alone putting it above the Qing dynasty, but I don’t think it catches up to Russia.