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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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these borders were made up by the Soviets and didn’t matter

As opposed to other borders that were directly proclaimed by God in a holy revelation? Of course all borders are made up by humans who were in charge of making borders at that time, there's literally no other option. Concluding from that that they don't matter is just saying "I am the sole authority on declaring borders because I am the only person whose opinion matters".

Most charitably, people seem to infer this based on his starting a war and speaking of history

You're saying it as if deriving the intentions of the person from his convictions and his actions is somehow a dirty trick, while believing his words - a words of known and repeated liar - is the only way to know the truth. Of course the real situation is the opposite - it is very easy to lie when speaking directly about one's intentions. However, it's very hard to hide your true intentions consistently through all the pattern of your actions, your references, your interests, your convictions and your propaganda - even if you could do the job convincingly, that would just have the effect of hindering your true efforts, because you henchmen and your subjects would also think the opposite of your true intentions if you're so good. But usually the actual intention shines through well enough, and in Putin's case it definitely does. While literally recreating precisely the borders of the Russian Empire (which btw were never stable anyway) is not the goal, certainly recovering it's former glory is, and any territory that has been owned by it is considered as valid target (even if some currently inaccessible).

Less charitably it’s a deliberate distortion to make the bad man appear even more bad.

Or, on your side, to make the bad man less bad out of contrarianism. I understand it's tempting to think if the state propaganda says Putin is bad then it probably isn't that bad. The tragic fact is he's worse.