A handful of wisdom from Pavel Gubarev, former ‘people's governor of the DPR’, who claims, no more and no less, that ‘Poles were once Russians too’ and are like lost sheep that need to be taken in. This narrative fits in with contemporary Russian messianism, according to which Russia is the sole representative of Slavic culture in the world, and everyone else is a lost sheep that has strayed from the motherland (read: Putin) through modern inventions such as Catholicism. The logic behind these statements is clear: Russia claims ownership of every Slav in the world, and if Putin so desires, each of them must be returned to the motherland. The fact that they left long ago and far away only means that greater force must be used.