The narratives of Europe have been shaped by responses to the threat of war. We're a bunch of jostling tribes who have been fighting, stealing, and intermarrying since times forgotten, our history shaped by expansionists with a plan.

It is hard not to see Putin as one such. We can't avoid the list of conquered territories and public detractors who have the most astonishing, often fatal, bad luck. I don't know if the narrative is being shoved down our throats, but if the narrative is there in any form we are bound to draw conclusions from it, shoved or not.