Putin justified the Crimea annexation by sacralizing territory as a holy national source

Evidence

In a cynical statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the 2014 Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in these words: “The Crimea has a sacred meaning for Russia. Like the Temple Mount for Jews and Muslims, the Crimea is the spiritual source of the formation of the multifaceted but monolithic Russian nation … It was on this spiritual soil that our ancestors first and forever recognized their nationhood” (Coyer 2015). — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1525

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the MOC’s core claim that sacralized land claims arm territorial aggression — and here the same machinery runs in a Russian-actor case. — connects to: Sacralized claims to territory are framed as non-negotiable across all authority — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1548