Former Mongolia leader Tsakhia Elbegdorj wrote "After Putin's talk. I found Mongolian historic map. Don't worry. We are a peaceful and free nation."
  • 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.

    • tal@lemmy.today
      3·
      9 months ago

      My understanding from past reading is that there’s some sort of conspiracy theory in Russia that the Alaska Purchase wasn’t properly formalized in some way, ergo it doesn’t count.

      googles

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_payment_conspiracy

      The Alaska payment conspiracy (Russian: Аляскинский платежный заговор, romanized: Ali͡askinskiĭ platezhnyĭ zagovor), also known as the Orkney conspiracy (Russian: Оркни заговор), is a conspiracy theory that the Russian Empire never received payment for the Alaska purchase from the United States, and that instead the ship, the Orkney, that carried the payment in gold was detonated for insurance money by Alexander ‘Sandy’ Keith, a con artist and explosives expert.[1][2][3] This conspiracy theory has been debunked in several ways.[4]

      Russian politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia has brought up these claims, as well as the bribery related to the deal.[8]

      The Fort Ross article has a similar-sounding conspiracy theory:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ross%2C_California

      Although the settlement was sold for $30,000 to Sutter, some Russian historians assert the sum was never paid; therefore legal title of the settlement was never transferred to Sutter and the area still belongs to the Russian people. A recent Sutter biography however, asserts that Sutter’s agent, Peter Burnett, paid the Russian-American Company agent William M. Steuart $19,788 in “notes and gold” on April 13, 1849, thereby settling the outstanding debt for Fort Ross and Bodega.

      Would be an interesting Cold War scenario to have a little exclave of Russia just north of San Francisco, kinda a Pacific Kaliningrad.