When Moscow Rules Europe

An overworked former actor from the Borderland, who got the job he pretended to have on a TV show and stuck with it despite regrets, walked into an ambush in a bar in East Coast America when the proprietor and bartender, wannabe best buds of Ivan, asked him to say thank you when crossing the threshold, and another thank you for being served a drink, and many more thank yous when picking up the tab.

The actor said all his thank yous but Ivan’s buddies kept accusing him of disrespect. The hapless and humiliated but still defiant actor left soon after without handing over the keys to Ukraine Underground.

In his citadel of citadels near St Basil’s where he had kept himself confined while dreaming of the city Peter built, Ivan couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Things were getting better and better. He was going to get away with it all, after all. And then live Koba’s unfulfilled dream of sunbathing on the beaches of West Europe.

In the capitals of the old continent, words of courage found their way out of the collective larynx once the shock and awe had subsided. The leader of Gaul and that of the Damp Island had both had cordial visits to the East Coast pub their Borderland friend had just been thrown out of. The Gaul and the superannuated leader of the Bundesrepublik voiced their continued support for the land without which Ivan’s country wouldn’t have a name.

The Damp Islander, who had surprised himself with his negotiating skills on the other side of the Pond, kept quiet in public but claimed to have spoken with both Ivan’s NBF and the former actor to calm them down. All eyes would soon be on the Bundesrepublik’s ageing new incumbent who had spoken of the Old World’s coming independence from the New World soon after scraping together an electoral victory of sorts.

THAT WAS A long time ago. Or so it seems. In the event, the Bundesrepublik, always divided along the fault lines of history, had another election that brought Ivan’s men and women to power in the very Bundestag they had been threatening to overrun. They wasted no time in welcoming Ivan to run the whole show with the blessings of his East Coast bud.

By this time, the Damp Island had been redeveloped as a high-end all-day English breakfast experience where Yanks lived in peace next door to Peterburgians and Muscovites who had owned most of the real estate till then. The Gauls, always too willing to save their beloved buildings, were convinced to elect a president and National Assembly friendlier to Ivan, who promptly abandoned his Crimean Palace for Brittany.

What then was left of the old continent?

Its leadership, or the apology for it, was supposed to pass into Nordic hands for the first time since the middle of the Thirty Years War. But with their Baltic allies already swallowed up as the war from the Borderland was redirected northwards in the absence of the old alliance demolished by Ivan’s best bud, their only option was voluntary re-Finlandisation. Not that Ivan cared anymore.

Alternate historyBrittanyBundesrepublikCrimeaEuropenear St Basil’RussiaWeb Exclusive