Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World

Author Tim Marshall is a British foreign affairs journalist, editor, and commentator at Sky News, the BBC, and LBC radio. He has written five books on world events.

Peter the Great founded the Russian empire in 1721; he also resisted the Swedish military threat from the west, improved the naval presence in the Black Sea to push back against the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the south, improved the military, and reformed the bureaucracy.

Russia’s leader in the early years of the twenty-first century, Vladimir Putin, has worked on similar projects. He, too, has pushed back against European and NATO adventurism, especially in Ukraine, where he responded to the overthrow of a Moscow-friendly regime by retaking the Crimean Peninsula and fomenting rebellion among ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. He also has put pressure on the western border by encouraging Russians in Moldova to press for independence. Moreover, like Peter, Putin has made improvements to the navy and its seaports.

With the same understanding of border issues as Peter the Great, Putin has tried to build a more powerful Russia behind secure borders that can withstand the ever-present threats from Europe and the Islamic south.