How Catherine the Great may have inspired Putin’s Ukraine invasion Published: March 14, 2022 11.52am EDT Author James Krapfl Associate Professor of History, McGill University

https://theconversation.com/how-catherine-the-great-may-have-inspired-putins-ukraine-invasion-178007 On December 23, 1791, Catherine II (“the Great”), the empress of Russia, authorized the creation of the Pale of Settlement, an area in the western part of the empire in which Jewish subjects would be required to reside. The borders of the Pale, which was abolished formally only in 1917, changed with time, as did the rules regarding Jews who were exempted from the requirement to live there, but at its peak, the Pale was home to approximately five million Jews, estimated to be 40 percent of the world’s Jewish population at the time. Putin parallels Parallels with Putin’s strategy are striking. The “little green men” who occupied Crimea in 2014, concealing their identity as Russian soldiers, recall Catherine’s tactic of surreptitiously fomenting civil war in Poland. Her financing of foreign politicians to weaken potential resistance, along with her rhetoric of defending freedom, anticipated the so-called hybrid warfare Putin has used to great effect across Europe and beyond.