One European country was ruled for many years by a dictator who relied on support from abroad. Let’s just be frank: from Moscow. But when Moscow changed its attitude toward him, he could no longer hold on to power. His closest allies refused to support him and thousands of ordinary people took to the streets demanding freedom. The dictator fell from power and fled the country. To Moscow.

Those who came to power in his stead tried to begin some democratic reforms, but the state quickly began to crumble. In just a year it had ceased to exist, and its land was absorbed by a neighbor which was stronger, both militarily and economically. This absorption was peaceful because the people living on both sides of the border spoke the same language, believed in the same God, and considered the same history, from ancient times until today, to be their own.

If you think that I’m retelling the official Kremlin version of recent events in Ukraine, you’re mistaken. It’s all much more interesting than that. The dictator who fled to Russia in 1989 was Erich Honecker. The country, absorbed in 1990 by its neighbor, was the German Democratic Republic. Nobody remembers this now, but there was once such a state in Europe. It was a member of the United Nations and its capital had embassies from every country in the world—including the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. We’ve become used to thinking of the disappearance of the GDR from the maps as the unification of Germany, that is, as a positive process, and that’s how it’s described in textbooks. But formally speaking, it was a merciless absorption of one state by another. The German republic founded by Konrad Adenauer in 1949—the same German republic headed today by Chancellor Angela Merkel—simply absorbed several provinces of the disbanded GDR. For some reason, no one today thinks to accuse the BRD of annexing the GDR, though the GDR didn’t even hold a referendum on the question of whether to join.

I understand very well that such a description of what’s happening in eastern Ukraine today may seem very simplistic, but if you called the annexation of Crimea by Russia a “unification of Russia,” by analogy with the German unification, this would not be so far from the truth. Borders between states take centuries of wars, deaths, and government collapses to establish. The borders between Russia and Ukraine were delineated by decision of the two states’ leaders in 1991. Millions of Russians and Ukrainians were left on either side, and it would be naïve to expect these borders to last for centuries.

This is how my theoretical report justifying Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine—particularly in Crimea, which has been occupied by Russian troops for almost two weeks—might read. But I did not invade Crimea. It was President Vladimir Putin, who has developed his own unique style of political management—based on lies and manipulation—over his fifteen years in power.