Just when we were all hoping that humanity had grown out of its imperial age, Putin proves us wrong. Of course, I’m by no means an expert and I’m sure I’m not the first person to point this out, but the Russian president seems to think his country is still an empire, and that it can do what it wants with its (former) vassal states. His plan to station nuclear weapons in Belarus is widely being condemned, of course, but it smacks of a mentality which refuses to accept Tsarist Russia never broke up, and still thinks Russia should have total dominion over almost all of eastern Europe. If that is the case, then we are in a very dangerous situation indeed: anyone who knows anything about Russian history knows how desperate things got under the tsars. They were despots with absolute power, who thought they had a divine right to rule. We now see many of the same traits in Putin, especially in his attitude towards former soviet states and his refusal to tolerate any form of opposition. It thus seems tsarism has returned to Russia, and it chills my heart to think where it will lead.