Is the war in Ukraine the result of a fear of castration?

Since castration anxiety plays a decisive role in the organisation of the sexes, it would not be surprising if it were to act in international relations as well, since nations and heads of state are in no way immune to fantasies and hysteria.

Looking at Putin's fixation with Ukraine, the help of psychoanalysis in understanding current events does not seem superfluous. Quite the contrary.

Let us start with the basics: the legitimacy of political power is continuously reconstructed from the legacy of a nation's founding father(-s, in case of the US). But when two states share the same father, a conflicting tension will always be present. For it is the inheritance that is at stake. Thus the repeated wars between France and Germany can be seen as a battle to be the heir to the first emperor in Europe. This is how imperial aspirations are born.

What Charlemagne is to France and Germany, Rurik is to Russia and Ukraine.

He is, in all likelihood, a legendary figure. But he is considered to be the founder of the Rurikid dynasty, which ruled Ladoga, Novgorod and ultimately the Kievan Rus’. The latest had as its capital Kiev and is the oldest common political entity in the history of the three modern East Slavic states: Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

The whole dogmatic foundation of these countries and the source of their political imagination is there. It continues to play a role without the actors of the current events being aware of it.

This is how we arrive at the Putin phobia. It is because he does not know how otherwise (democratically) to build his own legitimacy, that the Russian president unconsciously turns to the mythical founding father and wants to destroy the Ukrainian nation in order to re-establish through blood Russia's genealogical link with its native land.

By denying the Ukrainian people the right to exist, he is carrying out a genealogical murder: no one else, according to him, can claim to be the heir of the father of the Russians, which the city of Kiev has symbolized since the 9th century.

Putin intuitively understands that there would never have been a Moscow without Kiev and that there can be no real Russian empire without the Ukrainian capital. Unable to take the city peacefully, he pulled back his army, because destroying Kiev was tantamount to patricide.

For a man who kills tigers and tames brown bears to be denied the right to be the master of the territory where the Russians were named is equivalent to castration.