Where does the motherland of the Russians begin?

During the beginning of 2022, soldiers from the Russian army were registered at the borders of Ukraine and the Baltic states – in large numbers. It was also noted that they were periodically posted in Armenia, Georgia, Ossetia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and even in the neighboring areas of Sweden, Finland and Norway. How do the Russians defend the idea that the borders of their motherland extend into the territories of other countries as well?

It is quite clear that the word motherland in Russian – Rodina – has a wider meaning than the expression in our own language. It is not limited to geographical areas, but more to people’s own thoughts and feelings, which delimit home, family and to some extent even God and religion. In an old Russian nursery rhyme, the framework for this image is beautifully dictated:

”The motherland starts from the first picture of the ABC book. It begins with the dear and trusted friends, from the songs mother sang to us when we were children. The park bench behind our fence, the quivering leaves of the birch in the yard back home and the chirping song of the first migratory birds make us feel the real atmosphere of the motherland. It starts with the village road, which we walked on, when we were happy and in love. Our whole future became part of our homeland.”

The people of Russia and their homes shape the borders of their motherland. The Russian-speaking population defines the areas of their homeland based on their own culture and religion. Therefore, Russia has often engaged in aid activities for ”its own people”, if situations arose where Russians were discriminated, or were treated unfairly. Participation has been considered their right, even if the Russian-speakers currently live within the borders of other nations.

During his term of office as President of Russia, Dimitrij Medvedev accurately expressed the contours of the homeland: ”It counts welfare and the dignity of human life. Peace between different ethnic groups and understanding between different cultures. This includes the protection against the minority peoples. An acceptance of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is an example of this protection mechanism.”

In recent years, the ”protection and defense of minority groups” has been directed at countries such as Kazakhstan, Georgia, Belarus and Eastern Ukraine, where some believe that the emergency defense has taken on unreasonably large proportions. Around the same time, China – which has increasingly allied itself with Russia – started a political trade blockade against Lithuania. It has created suspicions that there may still be a power struggle with the intention of expanding the home country’s borders. China, Russia and Belarus’ joint negotiations have led to long-term political agreements and trade unions, among other things. Therefore, it is likely that China and Russia have created a united front against the United States and the European Union (EU).

Leif Kihlström, who was an expert at the Foreign Policy Institute in Sweden, has stated in a deeper analysis a few years ago ”that the border of Russia’s sphere of interest runs along the shore of the Baltic Sea. Sooner or later, they will most likely look for opportunities to reach there. How and when, no one knows yet.”

Lithuania and Kazakhstan in focus

When the Soviet Union collapsed, then Catholic Lithuania and their president Vytautas Landsbergis were the main figure of the singing revolution in the Baltics. The tanks of the Soviet Union failed to subdue the people’s longing for freedom. The hopes of leaving the atheistic era in favor of the era of freedom were always in the hearts of the people. After the collapse of the empire, the regents in Moscow felt a special hatred for Lithuania and its Christians, because the country’s church and the faithful fought boldly for independence and freedom.

Vytautas Landsbergis grandson Gabrielius Landsbergis served as the country’s foreign minister until November 2024. During his period in government the country had very friendly ties with Taiwan and at the same time falled out of favor with communist China, which also led to a trade boycott of Lithuania. The matter was not alleviated by the fact that the country also granted political asylum to opposition leaders from Belarus. The sad thing was, however, that the EU did not give wholehearted support to Lithuania during the time of hard pressure. Many countries are still afraid that trade relations with China can cool down, if they are supporting contries like Lithuania in similar conflicts.

At the end of December 2021, Kazakhstan’s leading politicians became the focus of violent demonstrations. Retired President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the country’s current leader Kasym-Zjomart Tokayev were forced to urgently ask Russia for help to save their position in power. They have had the support of both Moscow and the Russian-speaking population in Kazakhstan for a long time, but the dramatic increase in energy prices led to a revolt among the population. This uprising was probably initiated by clans with Turkic and Muslim backgrounds. In this way, the repressed ethnic tensions in society had their dramatic outlet.

However, the security forces from Russia managed to calm down the situation at the same time as the internet connections in the country were shut down. Estimates put the death toll at over 200 and nearly 10,000 people were arrested in connection with the unrest. The evangelical Christians in Kazakhstan gathered in dozens of churches for prayer. They prayed for peace and that the unrest in the long run would not create tension between the Slavic and Muslim populations.

The current political leadership seeks to implement a policy where all religions are equal before the law. If the uprising of the Kazakh population had not been suppressed, the situation could well have escalated, so that the Muslim forces had increased their influence in the society. In the future, this would probably have made the activities of the evangelical churches more difficult, especially in the Kazakh-speaking areas, not least in the southern and western parts of the country

Vladimir Putin expands the borders of the motherland

It is interesting to note, what kind of people Vladimir Putin has in his immediate team of associates. Prime Minister Michail Mishustin’s mother originally comes from Kotlas, which is right on the border with the Republic of Komi, and his father is a Jew from Belarus. The chief of staff for the management team is Anton Vaino (Vaino is an Estonian word and means ”persecution”), grandson of one of the last General Secretaries of the Communist Party of Soviet Estonia, Karl Vaino. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s father is Armenian and his mother is from Georgia, but is of Russian descent. The former Minister of Defense, hails from the Autonomous Republic of Tuva, home to around 200,000 nominal Buddhists.

The leadership of the Orthodox Church works closely with Russia’s political leadership, especially when it comes to matters of religious policy. In the leadership of the church is a group of several priests, who have their roots in Mordvinia – the Finno-Ugric areas in the Volga-Ural area.

All these people form a unit, where each has lived a large part of his life as minorities in ”foreign” republics, or in an environment with a different culture. Most likely they have experienced discrimination, perhaps even humiliation of some kind. Therefore, there may be grounds for assuming that they find it easy to identify with people who today live under similar conditions in the Caucasus, Siberia, Belarus and in Finno-Ugric areas.

Eesti Päevalehti in Estonia has quite convincingly documented that Vladimir Putin may have lived part of his life in the territory of the Veps people in Leningrad County. Could this be part of the explanation for why Russia’s current leadership has recently been so motivated to help ”discriminated” Russians in Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Baltics?

Kingdom of God

When I think of the borders of the Russian Empire and the question of where they begin and where they end, the thought of the Kingdom of God creeps in. Where do its boundaries take shape? We cannot draw them in a visible way, or say where our heavenly homeland begins, or how the borders of the Kingdom of God are formed around us.

Our mission is not to fight in the political arena, or to draw visible boundaries for people, because ”The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ´Here it is´, or ´There it is´, because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17: 20-21).

It is of the utmost importance that we can spread the knowledge of the Lord of Peace among all the peoples of Eurasia and prepare ourselves for the meeting with our Master Jesus Christ – before He returns and the end will come (Matt. 24:14).

Rauli Lehtonen

The text is an AI-translation from Swedish language.