evidence: Putin, Kotkin explained, shares Kutuzov’s vision of a Russia that is multiethnic in character. For Kutuzov and Putin alike, the people who live in Russia proper are "Greater Russians," Belarusians are "White Russians," and the Ukrainians are "Little Russians." During the era in which Kutuzov lived, a Ukraine with politically recognized borders did not exist. Moreover, at the time, the Crimean Peninsula was the domain of the Tatars, an ethnic Muslim population that had been under the rule of the Ottoman Empire until Empress Catherine the Great transferred this territory to Russian control in 1783. Despite Kutuzov and Imperial Russia’s victory over Napoleon, a nationalistic culture prevailed over the concept of imperialism in lands dominated by the Kremlin, especially in Ukraine. [...] Kotkin argued that some analysts are mistaken to believe that NATO expansion caused Russia to feel insecure and thus was the primary reason for Putin to start a war in Ukraine. As Kotkin explained above, Putin, like Kutuzov and other Russian imperialists, doesn’t believe Ukraine exists as a separate nation and is largely motivated by an impulse to make Russia a great power.