00:00Now, the center of the greatest crisis in Europe since the Second World War is, of course, one man, President Vladimir Putin.
00:08In an impassioned address to the nation on Monday, he set out in 7,500 rather rambling words his version of this region's history.
00:18It is that reading of history which motivates and he claims justifies his actions in Ukraine.
00:30Today is Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia, and the man who has claimed that mantle for over two decades as president came to pay his respects at Moscow's much-visited tomb of the unknown soldier this morning.
00:44The reason why Europe is now on the brink of war is largely because of one man's view of Russian history and his autocratic power to do something about it, alone with the demons that he wants to slay.
01:00Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent, used to like portraying himself as a man of action, in touch with nature, who went after fish, not countries.
01:10But Mr Putin has evolved from this.
01:13In later life, he's retreated into a cocoon made of COVID, distrust and faith.
01:19He prefers his own company, even in church.
01:22Take this year's televised midnight mass in Moscow.
01:25While the congregation celebrated in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Putin was all alone with his maker, looking somber and a little uncomfortable.
01:38Vladimir Putin sees the Orthodox Church as the spiritual mantle of greater Russia, the very reason for its birth.
01:45He was the driving force behind the creation of this giant statue at the gates of the Kremlin in 2016.
01:54Prince, then Saint Vladimir, his namesake, converted to Orthodox Christianity in 988.
02:00This was the foundation of ancient Russia, and he was its first ruler, its first protector of the fatherland.
02:07But here they call him Volodymyr, and they see him as the founder of the Ukrainian nation.
02:23His bones and the bones of many of Russia's other great saints are buried in the churches and monasteries of Kiev.
02:30If Vladimir Putin were ever to enter the city as the conqueror, expect him to make a beeline for these places.
02:37This is his temple mount.
02:39In his view, there can be no reconstitution of great Russia without its inclusion.
02:45How do we know that?
02:46Because he told us so on Monday on television.
02:49This was a stream of consciousness version of a 5,000-word essay that he wrote last summer as Putin, the amateur historian.
03:10And there's the rub, rival versions of the same history.
03:15Putin told us again that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a disaster because it allowed Ukraine to break away,
03:23diminishing Russia and its historic claim to be a nation anchored in Europe.
03:29But that's not how the people of Ukraine see it.
03:32They've been defending their right to see the collapse of the Soviet Union as liberation from Moscow's tyranny.
03:42That is their version of the past, and they're prepared to pay for it in blood.
03:49It is an argument about rival interpretations of history, a clash of myths that threatens to become a clash of armies poised in the snow.
04:02It's an attempt at theyeing of ancient meters, therefore, to contend for which father does not want to be made by the
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