A poster in a public place in the Tambov region – which is about 40 miles south of Moscow – has been circulated by several foreign media outlets in recent days. The poster will display a map of the “New Empire of Russia”.
According to the current map, the future empire of Russia will include the territory of the former Soviet Union, as well as the countries of Finland, Greece, Mongolia, Alaska and the former Yugoslavia.
– We teach you to love your homeland, – says the poster hanging on the wall of the local education center.
Crazy map
Military historian and author Chris Owen has discussed the map on X, formerly known on Twitter, calling it “historically inaccurate”.
– The map appears to be intended to be a mixture of the old Soviet Union and the old Russian Empire, which included Alaska until 1867. However, it is somewhat historically accurate – Greece and the former Yugoslavia were not under Russian or Soviet rule, Owen writes.
Margareta Zavadskaya, senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute, tells the Finnish newspaper Next that the map is probably a “bad joke”.
– This is a crazy map that looks very scandalous – a bad imperial joke even by Russian standards, you say.
Zavadskaya believes the map looks unrealistic and bears the stamp of “Russian propaganda and unrealistic wishful thinking”.
Taurus to old maps
The map has also been discussed before 7×7 Horizontal Russiaan independent regional newspaper and blog platform for Northwestern Russia.
According to the newspaper, Russian patriots are increasingly turning to old maps. Also in May, Valery Zorkin, the head of Russia’s Federal Constitutional Court, took an old map from the 17th century to Vladimir Putin to suggest that Ukraine had not existed as a country in 350 years.
Old Map: Valerig Zorkin (TV), President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Russia, showed an old map from the 17th century to Vladimir Putin to indicate that Ukraine did not exist as a country 350 years ago. Photo: The Kremlin
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7×7 was one of the winners Free Media Awards in 2019. The award is given by the institutions Fritt Ord and ZEIT-Stiftung – which refer to the regional newspaper as “an independent grassroots media and solidarity project that publishes news, investigative journalism projects, professional reports, commentaries and blogs”.
The awards came “as a support for those journalists and media outlets who refuse to give up despite reprisals and financial difficulties,” according to him word free.
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