RUSSLAND 🌎 S1E3 IMPERIUM - Karten der Macht
Von Zaren, Kalten Kriegen und der ewigen Sehnsucht nach einem Imperium: Wie die Größe Russlands seine Geschichte prägt.
Von den Zaren zu Putin: Die Doku „IMPERIUM – Karten der Macht: RUSSLAND“ beleuchtet die tief verwurzelte Sehnsucht des größten Landes der Erde nach einem Reich, das sich über Kontinente erstreckt.
Russland ist ein Land der Superlative: Es ist nicht nur flächenmäßig der größte Staat, sondern auch das Land mit den meisten Zeitzonen, geteilt durch die eurasische Landmasse. Diese immense Ausdehnung ist Segen und Fluch zugleich und prägte die Geschichte von den Anfängen der Kiewer Rus über das Zarenreich bis zur Sowjetunion und der heutigen Russischen Föderation.
Die geographische Position und die riesigen, oft schwer zu kontrollierenden Gebiete führten historisch zu einer starken Zentralisierung der Macht – sei es unter autokratischen Zaren, kommunistischen Generalsekretären oder modernen Präsidenten. Doch die Landkarte erzählt auch von ständigen Konflikten mit Nachbarn, vom Kalten Krieg und von dem Versuch, militärische und politische Einflusssphären zu schaffen und zu sichern.
Mit einzigartigen historischen Karten und Expertenanalysen erklärt die ZDFinfo-Dokumentation die geopolitischen Triebkräfte, die das russische Verständnis von Macht, Sicherheit und dem Anspruch auf eine Großmachtrolle bis heute bestimmen. Die Sendung macht sichtbar, wie die Landkarte selbst zum Schlachtfeld der Ideologien und Interessen wurde
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Von Zaren, Kalten Kriegen und der ewigen Sehnsucht nach einem Imperium: Wie die Größe Russlands seine Geschichte prägt.
Von den Zaren zu Putin: Die Doku „IMPERIUM – Karten der Macht: RUSSLAND“ beleuchtet die tief verwurzelte Sehnsucht des größten Landes der Erde nach einem Reich, das sich über Kontinente erstreckt.
Russland ist ein Land der Superlative: Es ist nicht nur flächenmäßig der größte Staat, sondern auch das Land mit den meisten Zeitzonen, geteilt durch die eurasische Landmasse. Diese immense Ausdehnung ist Segen und Fluch zugleich und prägte die Geschichte von den Anfängen der Kiewer Rus über das Zarenreich bis zur Sowjetunion und der heutigen Russischen Föderation.
Die geographische Position und die riesigen, oft schwer zu kontrollierenden Gebiete führten historisch zu einer starken Zentralisierung der Macht – sei es unter autokratischen Zaren, kommunistischen Generalsekretären oder modernen Präsidenten. Doch die Landkarte erzählt auch von ständigen Konflikten mit Nachbarn, vom Kalten Krieg und von dem Versuch, militärische und politische Einflusssphären zu schaffen und zu sichern.
Mit einzigartigen historischen Karten und Expertenanalysen erklärt die ZDFinfo-Dokumentation die geopolitischen Triebkräfte, die das russische Verständnis von Macht, Sicherheit und dem Anspruch auf eine Großmachtrolle bis heute bestimmen. Die Sendung macht sichtbar, wie die Landkarte selbst zum Schlachtfeld der Ideologien und Interessen wurde
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LernenTranskript
00:00Russia, the largest country in the world, covers over 10 percent of the total land area.
00:12From the Arctic Ocean to the Caucasus Mountains, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. A diversity of landscapes and mineral resources.
00:24Russia is the largest country in the world and therefore has an enormous potential of resources.
00:32But there's a problem.
00:38Russia is an unstable land power.
00:43There are no geographical barriers in the west and east. There is no year-round navigable port along the 24,000-kilometer-long northern coast.
00:54Therefore, throughout the centuries, Russia's rulers have constantly tried to expand their borders.
01:00Geography is a crucial element in political decisions.
01:03It is also crucial to understand how states have expanded or shrunk throughout history.
01:08Russia is a vast nation.
01:26It spans two continents, Europe and Asia.
01:31And is therefore almost twice the size of Canada, the second largest country in the world.
01:43There is a ten-hour time difference between Russia's eastern and western borders.
01:49When the sun rises in the west, it has already set in the east.
01:54Russia borders 14 different countries and four seas.
02:02The Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean to the east, and the Black and Caspian Seas to the southwest.
02:11Russia is a land power and has hardly any natural borders.
02:16That's why it feels threatened and is aggressive.
02:22With 144 million inhabitants, Russia is considered the most populous country in Europe.
02:30But on average, only eight people live per square kilometer.
02:34Conurbations exist only in the west.
02:39Here, the climate and soil conditions are favorable for agriculture.
02:42In contrast, the sparsely populated east is characterized by permafrost and an icy climate.
02:51The Russian taiga is the largest contiguous forest area on Earth.
02:57Its wood is one of the country's many resources.
03:05But how has geography shaped the land and its people?
03:09And what impact does it have on politics and history?
03:19The origins of Russia can be found along the Volga and Dnieper rivers.
03:27The Volga is the longest river in Europe, with a length of approximately 3000 kilometers.
03:32Like the Dnieper, it originates in the Waldei Heights in northwestern Russia.
03:43From there they flow southeast into the Caspian Sea and south into the Black Sea.
03:48From the 6th century onwards, Slavic tribes settled along the rivers.
03:59The soils there are ideally suited for growing grains such as wheat and barley.
04:06In the 8th century, Scandinavian Vikings finally advanced southwards.
04:18They are looking for new hunting grounds for fur-bearing animals.
04:22The Vikings, as well as the local Slavs, used the pelts of sable, ermine, and mink to produce high-quality clothing.
04:32For sale, it is transported via rivers and seas as far as Byzant and the Orient.
04:47The waterways were crucial.
04:50They were the best way to transport goods and travel.
04:54Much easier than by land.
04:56Because roads in the modern sense did not yet exist.
04:59Large rivers like the Volga and the Dnieper were the main transport routes at that time.
05:07As Vikings and Slavs grew closer,
05:10Through trade, the settlements along the rivers developed into flourishing cities.
05:18Historical chronicles such as the Chronicle of Nestor see this as the origin of the Rus people.
05:29The first mentions of Rus come from Western European text sources from the 9th century.
05:38But there are also Arabic sources from this period.
05:42From the 840s and 850s, which mention the Rus as Al-Rusia.
05:47The name Rus has its roots in the Old Norse Rus, which means rowing.
05:58In their early days, the Rus were little more than a loose confederation of principalities.
06:04They settle along the Dnieper river, with Novgorod and Kyiv as their centers.
06:09At the end of the 9th century, they united to form the Rus' Empire.
06:15Its center will be the strategically located city of Kyiv.
06:19Archaeologist Charlotte Hedenscherner-Jonsson and her team repeatedly find evidence of this in Viking graves.
06:37how Scandinavian and Slavic ways of life have blended.
06:41For me, the Rus were more of a culture.
06:51It was less about whether one was Slavic than about identifying with a society or a cultural way of life.
07:03Perhaps they saw themselves neither as Scandinavians nor as Slavs, but as Rus, as a mixed culture.
07:11Byzantium and its capital Constantinople also exerted influence on Rus.
07:24The empire occupies large parts of the Black Sea coast and becomes an important strategic partner of Kievan Rus.
07:31To solidify this connection, Vladimir the Great married the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II at the end of the 10th century.
07:45The condition is that Vladimir and Rus should officially convert to Christianity.
07:51The adopted faith views state authority as divinely ordained.
08:03It proves to be an important instrument of power for Vladimir and lays the foundation for a close interrelationship between church and state.
08:12The church serves the state, so to speak, in controlling, subjugating, and dominating the population, and also in providing ideological support.
08:26The Dnieper and Volga rivers become natural baptismal fonts into which Vladimir forces his subjects.
08:32The shared religion helps the ruler to unite the individual principalities of Kievan Rus.
08:45But after Vladimir's death, the newly created unit falls apart.
08:51While the princes of Kievan Rus fought each other for the next 200 years, a great power emerged on the edge of the Eurasian Steppe.
08:59The Mongol Empire, called Tartars by the Rus.
09:09Everything changed with the Mongol invasion in 1240.
09:15Therefore, there is no continuity between what happened in the Viking Age and what we see today.
09:20The Mongols under Batukan subjugated Kievan Rus and founded the Kanat of the Golden Horde.
09:28The following two centuries are etched into Russian national consciousness as the time of the Tartar yoke.
09:36The new rulers demand tribute payments and occupy important trade routes.
09:42They thus ended the golden era of Kievan Rus.
09:46This period remains politically charged and controversial to this day.
09:50Russia sees her as the origin of its nation.
09:53Ukraine and Belarus, on the other hand, refer to Kievan Rus as the birthplace of an independent culture.
10:03Control over history is always part of warfare.
10:09That's why these stories are so important.
10:11Because they appear in the Nestor Chronicle, which deals with Rus and the Kievan princes and everything that follows.
10:21It is therefore a founding myth with historical roots.
10:26The Golden Horde creates new conditions between the Carpathians and the Urals.
10:37In the west, however, the weakened Kievan Rus' lost territories to Poland and Lithuania.
10:43But under the protection of dense forests, Moscow's rise finally began in the 14th century.
10:52Under Mongol rule, its rulers expanded the city into a grand principality and conquered more and more lands.
11:00In 1480, Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow finally succeeded in defeating the Mongols and shaking off the Tartar yoke.
11:10Under his rule, the city developed into the center of the Russian Empire.
11:17Ivan's most important task is to ensure the food supply for the growing population.
11:24Originally, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was a relatively small area that relied on simply expanding its arable land, as it could only guarantee two or three crop rotations.
11:39And the soil was depleted relatively quickly.
11:44In 1547, the grandson of Ivan III was crowned Tsar of Russia.
11:53Following in the tradition of the Roman Caesars, Ivan IV declared Moscow the third Rome.
12:00And to the center of Orthodox Christianity.
12:05The former territory of the Golden Horde has meanwhile disintegrated into several independent canates.
12:19The young Tsar intends to finally put the Mongolian rulers in their place.
12:26Above all, he wants to bring the Volga, with its important trade routes, under his control.
12:31Control over these rivers was of great importance for the expansion of the Russian Empire.
12:43That is why the conquest of Kanads Kazan is so important.
12:47From that moment on, Russia controlled the Volga as a central transport artery.
12:51In the summer of 1552, Russian troops stood before the gates of Kazan.
13:06The city is the key to the southern Volga and the trade routes to the Caspian Sea.
13:12After weeks of siege, the troops of Ivan IV stormed the city with battering rams and cannons, killing a large part of the population.
13:29The conquest of Kazan has far-reaching consequences.
13:34It opens the way eastward into the Siberian Plain.
13:38In the north, this transitions into the tundra.
13:45Permafrost keeps large parts of the ground frozen all year round, making agriculture impossible.
13:55In the south, the extensive coniferous forests of the taiga beckon with their abundance of timber, furs and mineral resources.
14:03However, temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees are slowing down Russian expansion.
14:13In addition, there are raids by the Siberian Kanates.
14:20Russia is a large country that essentially arose as an empire through the colonization of its neighboring territories.
14:27So it has a huge, wide area that is very easy to conquer, especially from the east.
14:34So the trauma, so to speak, of the Moscow dental empire is the Mongol invasions, which basically came from the east and conquered huge territories.
14:45To prevent this from happening again, Cossack territories in the east were to be conquered at the end of the 16th century.
14:53The independent cavalry associations and farmer-militia want to operate independently in the border regions, but also fight on Russia's side.
15:02One of them is Jermak Timofejevic.
15:10His clients, the Stroganovs, are considered one of the richest merchant families in Russia.
15:16Timofejevic is supposed to conquer Siberia for them.
15:19On their way to the capital of Kanad, Sibir, the Cossack captain and his nearly 1000 men have to fight their way through the swamps by boat.
15:35But their experience and modern firearms bring them victory.
15:40Timofejevic finally returns to Moscow with a rich haul.
15:52In the following decades, Russian troops, freedom seekers and adventurers conquered the vast expanses of Siberia.
16:01They subjugate the remaining Canarians as well as the indigenous population.
16:07The plundered riches financed the further expansion of the Russian Empire to the east.
16:18This eastward expansion in the early modern period has several reasons.
16:25One of these is the subjugation of the steppe peoples and thus protection from them.
16:29But it's also about resources and productivity.
16:32But while Ivan IV was able to expand his empire in the east, the weakness of Russian geography became apparent in the west.
16:45It has two vulnerable spots.
16:46This is the east, where the Mongols invaded and where Ivan the Terrible conquered this vast area of land.
16:53And then attention turned to the European part.
16:55Apart from the Ural Mountains, there are no major differences in altitude between the Carpathian Mountains in the west and Siberia in the east.
17:06And thus hardly any geographical boundaries.
17:18Dominance in the Baltic Sea region is also contested.
17:23Conflicts continued to arise until the middle of the 16th century.
17:28Especially with its western neighbor Livonia.
17:36Livonia at that time comprised parts of present-day Estonia and Latvia, as well as the Baltic coast.
17:46With the invasion of Livonia by Russian troops in 1558, Ivan IV also came into conflict with its protecting powers.
17:56Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Denmark and the German Order of Knights.
18:06Ivan is prepared to pay a high price for access to the Baltic Sea.
18:13Because this promises faster and year-round trading.
18:18After more than 25 years of war, Ivan the Terrible, as he is now called, has to admit defeat.
18:26But he has achieved one thing.
18:28Russia is on the radar of European rulers.
18:31This became a problem at the beginning of the 17th century.
18:38For when Ivan's heir, Fjordor I, died without descendants, the young Tsardom was left without a ruler.
18:47While Russian noble families fight over the throne, wars with Sweden and Poland-Lithuania in the west cause chaos and destruction.
18:56In the Russian national memory, this period of turmoil leaves behind the so-called Smuta, deep uncertainty and a feeling of vulnerability.
19:07The paradox of Russian history is that outsiders often perceive Russia as an aggressor, as predatory and expansionist.
19:21And of course, if you look at the map, Russia has repeatedly conquered foreign territories.
19:26At the same time, the Russians see themselves as vulnerable and threatened.
19:35Only the coronation of the first Tsar from the Romanov dynasty and peace treaties with Sweden and Poland-Lithuania ended the chaos.
19:46The Romanovs will hold the vast country together for the next 300 years.
19:51In 1697, the 25-year-old Piotr Alekseyevich Romanov traveled through Europe.
20:03He goes down in history as Peter the Great.
20:07In the shipyards of Prussia, Livonia and Holland he became acquainted with Western European shipbuilding.
20:14He decides to realize the grand vision of Ivan IV.
20:18Russia is to rise to become one of the imperial great powers of Europe and a seafaring nation.
20:28However, to achieve this, Russia needs to expand beyond its borders.
20:35Although Russia, with over 35,000 kilometers, is one of the countries with the longest coastlines,
20:42However, due to the climate, most ports are only navigable for a few months of the year.
20:46Russia has only limited access to the world's oceans.
20:52One of these restricted routes leads across the Baltic Sea if you don't want to travel through the Arctic pack ice.
20:58However, this is problematic because it requires driving past several countries.
21:02In 1700, the Kingdom of Sweden dominated the Baltic Sea.
21:09However, in alliance with Denmark, Norway, Poland, Lithuania and Saxony, Peter the Great conquered large parts of the Baltic region over more than 20 years of war.
21:19To consolidate his position, he simultaneously had his Venice of the North, St. Petersburg, built.
21:30From 1712 onwards, with its access to the Baltic Sea, it became the new capital of the Tsarist Empire.
21:36Peter endeavored to bring Russia closer to Europe as quickly as possible and to establish a pro-European culture.
21:49Access to the sea played a very important role for him and his kingdom during this time.
21:56Strategically located, the construction of the new capital city proves to be a disaster.
22:09The main culprits are the marshy ground and the icy winters.
22:19Tens of thousands of serfs and prisoners of war died during the construction from cold, disease and hunger.
22:26Peter's main goal is to modernize Russia according to the Western European model.
22:39This includes administration and infrastructure, but also the development of new industries, such as iron ore production.
22:49And the expansion of the army.
22:51Peter was interested in cutting-edge Western technology, especially in the naval and military sectors.
23:06Russia was thus militarized like never before.
23:08Catherine the Great also benefited from this when she ascended the Russian throne in 1762.
23:22She continues the dream of Tsar Peter, of Russia at the forefront of Europe.
23:28Catherine, more than any other ruler, dedicated herself to transforming Russia into a respected European great power.
23:48The focus was on territorial acquisitions in Poland, in the western border regions, but especially in the southeast.
23:54There, she wants to achieve what her predecessors failed to do.
24:01A base for the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
24:06The enemy, the Ottoman Empire.
24:08In 1770, a fateful naval battle took place off Czeschme in what is now western Turkey.
24:19During a surprise attack, a Russian naval squadron sinks a large part of the Ottoman fleet.
24:26It is the first major Russian naval victory.
24:29In the following years, Catherine conquered large parts of the Black Sea coast and annexed Crimea in 1783.
24:41The peninsula has been inhabited by Tartars for centuries and was long part of the Ottoman Empire.
24:49In the strategically located southern bay of the peninsula, the ruler finally had the port city of Sevastopol built.
24:59Crimea is geopolitically very important because it is essentially the bridgehead into the Black Sea.
25:11If they control Crimea, then they essentially control the Black Sea.
25:15This paves the way for Katharina to reach further territories in the west.
25:20Large parts of the declining Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became part of the Russian Empire by the 18th century.
25:29This includes Belarus and parts of present-day Ukraine and Poland.
25:36When Catherine the Great died in 1796, she had transformed Russia into a major European power.
25:46Nearly 20 years later, Russia had to defend itself against the French conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte.
25:52His campaign took him and his army as far as Moscow in 1812, but ended in disaster.
26:00By the end of the war, Napoleon had lost several hundred thousand soldiers to hunger, cold, and the constant attacks of the Russian troops.
26:09In Russia, the victorious conflict goes down in history as the Patriotic War.
26:14The Tsarist Empire, as the savior of Europe, could help determine the reorganization of the continent.
26:20But despite military successes, it remains an agrarian state.
26:28As industrialization transforms the European continent, Russia faces an enormous challenge.
26:35In the north and east, wood and furs have always been the most important trade and export goods.
26:45Agriculture, on the other hand, is concentrated in the west of the country, where the soils are particularly fertile.
26:54Especially in the so-called Black Earth Belt in present-day Ukraine, grains such as wheat and oats are grown for export.
27:05This was due to serf farmers, who made up about three-quarters of the population until the end of the 19th century.
27:15The problem is, the land they are farming does not belong to them.
27:21Social and economic advancement is hardly possible for them.
27:25Serfdom was formally abolished only with the agrarian reform of 1861 under Alexander II.
27:37But hardly any farmer can afford the high lease prices for their land.
27:44Many move to the cities to find work in industry.
27:48A large portion of Russia's raw materials, including coal, gold and diamonds, lie underground in Siberia.
27:59A region that, despite numerous expeditions in past centuries, has hardly any infrastructure.
28:06This was set to change from 1891 onwards with the construction of a gigantic project, the Trans-Siberian Railway.
28:17With a length of over 9000 kilometers, it is still considered the longest railway line in the world.
28:24And since the early 20th century, it has connected the sparsely populated areas in the east with Russia's west.
28:31When the First World War breaks out over Europe, the industrial backwardness becomes the Achilles' heel despite all the progress.
28:41Poor equipment and supply problems are leading to high losses among Russian troops.
28:47Furthermore, Russia is losing large territories in the west.
28:56Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland became independent after the First World War.
29:06At the same time, internal unrest is escalating.
29:09The Russian Empire ended with the October Revolution of 1917 and the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II.
29:22It was replaced by communist Soviet Russia under Lenin.
29:26The Bolsheviks' idea was world revolution.
29:36And it should win across the board.
29:40Soviet republics were to be established everywhere.
29:43But that didn't work.
29:47Then power had to be seized.
29:49And the Red Army crushed national resistance with fire and sword.
29:58In the ensuing civil war, the Bolsheviks reconquered territories in Ukraine and the Caucasus.
30:05And incorporate them into the Soviet Union.
30:11Baku in present-day Azerbaijan is of particular importance in this context.
30:19Because oil was discovered there in the mid-19th century.
30:28The Bolsheviks nationalized the approximately 300 oil companies in Baku, thus securing access to the valuable fuel.
30:40When Joseph Stalin came to power in 1924, he also focused on industrialization.
30:47However, he has to import the technology to extract the country's mineral resources at great expense.
30:56Stalin hoped to gain profits from agriculture, which he nationalized and collectivized.
31:03The profits now flow first to the state, then to the supply of the population.
31:08In order to advance industrialization, Stalin had to bring the Russian villages and peasants under his control.
31:20This led to a rapid, brutal and cruel collectivization, during which millions of peasants were deported.
31:28The taxes are prohibitively high, especially in Ukraine.
31:36Between 1932 and 1933, up to three and a half million people starved to death there.
31:45In the memory of Ukrainians, this period is seared into the consciousness as the Holodomor, as killing by starvation.
31:51Those who resisted Stalin's harsh regime ended up in labor camps, the so-called Gulags.
32:09Millions of people are being deported, many of them to Siberia.
32:14There, they have to toil under the harshest conditions and extract mineral resources.
32:21During the Great Terror of the early 1930s, the camps and prisons became increasingly overcrowded.
32:40This led to the idea of using the labor of prisoners in the interests of so-called state security.
32:47Slave labor accompanied the Stalinist system until its end, in the mid-1950s.
32:55While Stalin's predecessors demonstrated their power primarily through geographical size,
33:08He recognizes that the foundation for power lay beneath Russia's soil in the 20th century.
33:15Because here you can find virtually inexhaustible raw material deposits.
33:19The vast land area is taking on a new significance, especially in the east.
33:30Russia's primary goal has always been strategic depth.
33:35Then came trade, and finally it was about oil.
33:39Access to oil in the 20th century meant not only energy security, but also military strength.
33:52In World War II, oil played a strategic role alongside ideology and the drive for expansion.
33:59When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, his advance targeted not only St. Petersburg, Moscow and Volgograd,
34:11but also the oil fields of Baku.
34:15But like Napoleon before him, Hitler also failed due to Russia's size and climate.
34:20All these countries were from the West: Sweden, Poland, France, and Germany.
34:28But none of them ever really got beyond Moscow, because the road is long and cold.
34:36For Russia, the Second World War goes down in history as the Great Patriotic War.
34:42Once again, the country is presenting itself as the savior of Europe.
34:46In 1945, Stalin helped determine the future of the continent at the Yalta Conference.
34:56The result? The Soviet Union secured Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in the west.
35:04States such as East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania are de facto becoming vassal states.
35:16The allies of the Second World War soon become enemies, ideologically opposed to one another.
35:26The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO for short, is led by the USA in the West.
35:33And the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union in the east.
35:38Shortly after the USA, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949.
35:47Both sides continued to arm themselves over the following decades.
35:53And they are building more and more military bases on their borders.
35:59The Soviet Union's neighboring states served as a buffer zone for the USSR.
36:04The main enemy is NATO.
36:08Yes, there are no natural barriers, in the sense of high mountains, except in the Caucasus.
36:15Buffer zones can only be created, so to speak, through land areas.
36:19Since the 1960s, these flat plains have served another purpose.
36:25They are used for the construction of pipelines.
36:28The Soviet Union is developing more and more oil and gas fields, for example in the Volga Ural region and in Western Siberia.
36:37The demand for fossil fuels is beginning to soften the rigid borders between East and West.
36:44There is a cliché about the Soviet Union being isolationist or self-sufficient and wanting nothing to do economically with the rest of the world.
36:58But that's not true.
37:02One of the most important results of the search for international partners was, among others, the pipeline deal.
37:07With the so-called pipeline natural gas deal, the Soviet Union won West Germany as a gas customer in February 1970.
37:21Germany is supplying the pipes and granting a billion-euro loan for the construction of the pipeline.
37:27In return, the Soviet Union supplies three billion cubic meters of gas annually.
37:37In the following years, business deals with other Western European countries were added.
37:44It is a development that marks the beginning of Russia's rise to become the world's largest gas producer.
37:51And it is the beginning of a mutual dependency.
37:54Without oil and gas, Russia would not be a major power.
38:06Russia is, as it likes to call itself, a fossil fuel superpower.
38:11After the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia not only faces the challenge of asserting itself on the world market,
38:19but also to redefine its geopolitical role.
38:24Numerous states in western and southern Russia declare their independence.
38:32The strategically important Crimea will become part of Ukraine.
38:38The problem is that Russia wants to keep Sevastopol as a naval base.
38:44The 1997 Fleet Agreement represents a compromise between the two countries.
38:49Russia is leasing the port facilities, and in return Ukraine will receive discounts on natural gas.
38:57A win-win situation until more and more Eastern European states joined NATO in the 2000s.
39:04The current president, Vladimir Putin, sees this as a threat to Russia.
39:11Russia knows that it would no longer be a European empire if Ukraine were to join NATO or the EU.
39:41It would only be one Eurasian or Asian one.
39:48With Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the attack on Ukraine in 2022, Putin is trying to prevent this.
39:58After years of nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War, he is threatening the West with the use of nuclear weapons.
40:11Putin not only instrumentalizes history, he transforms it into propaganda.
40:18In the past, Russia was surrounded by enemies.
40:28Therefore, he is trying to bring these countries back under his influence using various means.
40:35Putin is also pursuing this goal with his search for oil and gas deposits in the north.
40:52With a share of up to 18 percent of gross domestic product in 2024, the energy sector is an important economic sector.
41:01Russia is the largest bordering state of the Arctic and has a vast territory in this region.
41:10In the 1980s, Russia and four other states agreed to keep the Arctic free of conflict.
41:23The agreements provide for exclusive economic zones, each extending 200 nautical miles into the Arctic Ocean.
41:32But conditions are changing.
41:35Until now, Russia's Arctic coasts were only navigable for a few months of the year.
41:48Climate change could cause areas with untapped resources to be ice-free year-round in the future.
41:55The rich resources, especially in the Arctic region, are the reason why Russia considers the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation to be its national resource base.
42:14Officially, Russia still refers to the Arctic as a zone of peace, stability and partnership.
42:22But the country is also arming itself to secure its northern border.
42:29The Russian military repeatedly demonstrates its readiness for combat through troop maneuvers.
42:35We see that Russia is increasingly arming itself in the Arctic and is essentially entering into a competition for influence, geopolitics, and of course resources in this region.
42:46The Arctic is therefore not only an early warning system for climate change, but also the stage for the power struggle over resources.
43:00With its war against Ukraine, Russia is demonstrating its desire to reconnect with the vast empire of the Soviet Union.
43:06At the same time, Putin is aiming for a global reorganization in which the West is to lose power.
43:16The map of the world will change permanently if Russia can continue this war of aggression, which violates international law, with impunity and without sanctions.
43:30We actually need to return to a state in which the inviolability of borders continues to apply and other states do not invade their neighbors.
43:42because they cling to neo-imperialist ideas that actually belong to the past.
43:49Despite its size and wealth of resources, Russia still feels threatened because of its geographical vulnerabilities.
44:03And history has confirmed this fear.
44:07Russia's future role will also depend on whether it remains dependent on fossil fuels.
44:15And thus, from an economy that may be adapting too slowly to the future.
44:22A challenge that is further intensified by Russia's geographical conditions.
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