Sudetenland or Finlandisation? Historical parallels of the Russia-Ukraine crisis

An autocratic national leader raises concern about the treatment of his ethno-cultural group, which forms a substantial minority, in a neighbouring country and threatens invasion if the territory they inhabit is not merged with his own country.

Does this seem like what we are witnessing in Russia and Ukraine, or between Russia and other post-Soviet Union states with a few changes?

Not exactly. This was the late summer of 1938, when Adolf Hitler, flush from the Anschluss, or "reunion" of Austria with his Third Reich earlier that year, demanded that Sudetenland, where German settlers had been living for centuries under the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire, and had become a part of the then Czechoslovakia following the World War I settlements, be handed over to him.

Comparisons between Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin started doing the rounds as soon as war returned to Europe following the Russian military action in Ukraine. Before considering how valid these are, let us see what the Sudetenland crisis led to.

As prominent statesmen from leading western democracies the UK and France buckled to Hitler's demand, giving rise to the phrase "appeasement politics", used

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