Misquote or not?
Sauer says:
“As Napoleon said, as a rule, war and negotiations are always conducted at the same time,” Medinsky said.
Unsurprisingly, the quote appears to have been made up.
Medinsky is Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Putin, who was leading the talks. Sauer may have found this claim in Ukrainian media. For example: https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russian-historian-medinsky-quoted-a-fake-1747424590.html
The New York Times, interestingly reports this differently:
But in comments on Russian state television, Mr. Medinsky also said that those who say a cease-fire must come before peace talks had no knowledge of history. He said, as Napoleon proved, “war and negotiations, as a rule, always happen simultaneously.” [1]
In fact if we locate a direct quote it seems that Medinsky did directly say that Napolean said that “war and negotiations happen at the same time”:
«О чем сейчас много кто говорит, что якобы сначала должно быть перемирие, 30 дней, 60 дней, неважно (…). Как говорил Наполеон, война и переговоры ведутся одновременно», — указал помощник президента России. [2]
Was Medinsky “making up a quote” as some Ukrainian media and Sauer claim? I asked Deepseek. It told me that, (paraphrased):
Yes, Napoleon Bonaparte is often credited with the idea that war and negotiations occur simultaneously. One of his famous quotes on this subject is:
“On s’engage et puis on voit” (“You engage, and then you see”).
Napoleon frequently combined military pressure with diplomatic overtures, believing that negotiations should continue even during conflict to exploit shifting advantages. He saw war and diplomacy as intertwined rather than separate phases.
However, the precise wording “war and negotiations happen simultaneously” is more of a paraphrase of his strategic philosophy rather than a direct quote. His campaigns (e.g., the 1805 Ulm Campaign, the 1809 war with Austria) often featured battlefield victories followed by immediate diplomatic offers, demonstrating this approach.
So, if we rely on Deepseek, (and I am inclined to, based on my experience of it), then, as I would have expected, in fact, while there may not be a direct quote – in general terms this view can be said to reflect how Napolean acted. A tiny bit of research found some suggestions that Deepseek is on track; in the Ulm campaign Napolean seems to have sent emissaries while continuing to march on his opponent. [3]
This is a typical example of how liberals argue these days. Everything is simplified into ‘true’ and ‘false’ in a one dimensional way. This is the epistemology of “Trump falsely claimed”. The whole world of interpretation and argumentation and rhetoric is collapsed into this simple and easy to understand black and white version of the world, in which, not surprisingly, liberals always find themselves in the right. Medinsky may have technically made the mistake of attributing a quote to Napolean when he would have been better off to have said, “as Napolean seemed to believe” or “as Napolean practised” but, it would seem, based on my (admittedly rather brief research), that he may not have been “making things up” as Sauer claims.
Really quite odd
Sauer says:
At the heart of Russia’s war in Ukraine is Putin’s distorted reading of history – so it was little surprise when Medinsky, a self-styled historian, reached for rogue historical analogies to justify the invasion. Nor would it be the first time Putin has cast himself in the image of Peter the Great.
But – it was Medinsky, who reached for “rogue historical analogies” – (in fact not, it seems, but anyway); not Putin. It was Medinsky who made a comparison with Russia’s Northern Wars under the Peter the Great and the willingness of Russia to stay the course in the present war, not Putin. [4] So “it was not the first time that Putin has cast himself in the image of Peter the Great” is just bizarre. Sauer refers in another paragraph to the Russian negotiating team as “talking heads” – so, one imagines in his mind, he has made some kind of argument. Medinsky is a “puppet” of Putin, (as is the head of Russian military intelligence and two Deputy Ministers who also attended the talks). Medinsky made a historical analogy to Russia’s Northern Wars fought by Peter the First. And thus we can understand that this is Putin making this reference. And thus he can say “not for the first time”. But; this is not how we normally process the words of diplomats and negotiators. Does Sauer have any evidence that Medinsky was deliberately doing something Putin had asked him to do, when he made his point about Russia’s Northern wars? One could say this is a kind of trope; Russians cannot think for themselves. They just parrot their leader.
The original Putin reference to Peter the Great was made in June 2022 and Putin said that, like Peter the Great, in the Swedish wars, Russia today was not taking something (in Ukraine) but “taking back” what was already Russia’s. There was possibly a hint of an ironic or humorous link with Putin not unaware that this made it seem like he was in the same role as Peter the Great for Russia. Putin appears to have been historically accurate. The Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617 between Russia and Sweden blocked Russian access to the Baltic Sea. Peter the Great can thus be seen as having “taken it back”. [5] Whether we then allow him the analogy – that in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, he is “taking back” territory is another question. But, that is the Russian perception.
There is no other evidence for “Putin’s distorted reading of history” in the article. The two examples Sauer gives do not appear to be “distortions”, and one of them was not even made by Putin. Sauer is probably referring to what has become a kind of Western media narrative line about “Putin’s distorted view of history”. This is one of those lines which someone says once and then they all repeat as if it were true and thus, it sort of becomes ‘true’. (In a way it really is true; since the criterion for truth in the liberal Western political and media classes seems to be that “a statement is true if it corresponds with what we say”). The original idea probably comes from Putin’s online historical essay explaining his view of Ukrainian history; a view he has also given in online interviews, for example his interview with Tucker Carlson. History is a matter of interpretation. The same historical events are read differently in different histories. For example, in the Pereiaslav Agreement in the mid 17th century did the Cossacks effectively hand over Ukraine to the Tsar in exchange for his help against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or, was it much less significant than that, and reflected a kind of autonomy for the Cossacks? It depends if you ask Russians or Ukrainian nationalists:
For Moscow, of course, this co-operation was conceivable only if it entailed Cossack recognition of the tsar’s sovereignty, and Khmelnitskii duly complied, taking a unilateral vow of loyalty in Pereiaslavl on 8 January 1654. Russian and Soviet historians subsequently portrayed this oath as a merger of Ukraine with Muscovy, even a ‘reunification’ of Muscovy with Kiev Rus. By contrast, Ukrainian historiography depicts this oath as the beginning of an independent ‘hetman state’, which lasted until the time of Catherine the Great. [6]
Putin’s ideas in his online historical essay and Carlson interview seem to me to be consistent with the facts. I don’t insist that his interpretation is correct. Only that it is plausible. At any rate, it is no more a “distortion” than any rival view of certain historical events could be called a “distortion”.
Sauer claims that Medinsky invokes Peter the Great’s Swedish campaign “as Putin is fond of doing”. Does Putin do this often? Or just once? “fond of” implies quite frequently. I wonder if Sauer has the references?
And so – the war is about the deluded dreams of Putin (aka. Peter the Great) and the Russian Empire?
As for “At the heart of Russia’s war in Ukraine is Putin’s distorted reading of history –” – what can we say? This is the theory that the Ukraine conflict started because Putin, outlandishly, woke up one day and decided to “recreate the Russian Empire”, taking the entire Russian military and security establishment along with him. (In fact; the “full invasion” was only of Donbas, so even it it was Putin “recreating the Russian Empire” is was on a pretty small scale). As Mearsheimer is fond of (really) pointing out; there is zero evidence for that, but there is a tonne of actual historical evidence that supports the view that the war is about what Russia says it is – the threat to Russia posed by putting NATO in Ukraine, and the threats by extreme Ukrainian nationalists to the Russian and Russian leaning people in Eastern Ukraine. (Even the Peter the Great analogy does not show a desire to recreate the Russian Empire; rather it is characteristic of Putin wanting to explain that Russia is not an aggressor),
This is all such bilge it is amazing it can be printed. It does not survive rational analysis. This particular article also seems to this writer to contain a sort of anti-Russian hatred – Russian negotiators are not individuals, for example; they are just “talking heads”. Russians, “not surprisingly”, “make up” and “distort” history. The possibility that they have a different history – a basic idea that anyone doing history should be able to grasp once they get beyond their A-levels is just too challenging for modern liberals. Only one version is right. Ours. (Even if it is supplied to us by Ukrainian intelligence and Western arms company sponsored think tanks).
Notes
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/world/europe/russia-ukraine-peace-talks.html
- https://lenta.ru/news/2025/05/16/medinskiy-protsitiroval-napoleona/
- https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2249/ulm-campaign/
- https://ura.news/news/1052934438
- https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Stolbovo
- Freeze, Gregory L.. Russia: A History (p. 85). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.