Russian colonialism

“ We remind you that Russia has never attacked anyone throughout its history.

— Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, “Russia Never Attacked Anyone, Says Kremlin; Slams ‘war’ Narrative Set By West”, February 20, 2022

russia

“ Russia is not a “nation”. It's the last colonial empire. Its metropole is localised in the Fürstenstadt of Moscow. It is the northernmost megapolis of the world, located furthest from the waterways and on the infertile soil. It is too expensive to feed

— Kamil Galeev, “Russian regional news can be quite informative: ‘There's now a shortage of places on Nizhny Tagil graveyards’” [1] (PDF)

“ Russian Federation is the extreme anomaly. It is the last European colonial empire that still continues to exist. Some of these colonies are predominantly white, others are POC-populated. All of them however, should receive a chance for independence from the metropole.

— Kamil Galeev, “Yes, but that is very gentle mode of war from the Russian perspective.” [2] (PDF)

“ Putin cannot announce a general mobilization, since that would be an admission that he is losing the war. It would too overtly break the social contract according to which the poor, the Asians, and forcibly mobilized Ukrainians do the dying.

— Timothy Snyder

• “When foreigners casually drop ‘bombing of kyiv’ these pics always come to mind. this is what #RussianColonialism did to chechnya and grozny when they tried to leave the empire in 2000. a war crime of horrific scale, but the rest of the world was like ‘meh’, so moscow continued” [3] PDF

• “List of wars involving Russia”

• “List of countries Russia/USSR attacked in just the last 100 years”

• The Russian Roadmap

• “This is an interesting poster from the Soviet Union. Notice how the #russians are in the middle? Notice how they are the most white and blonde? The Ukrainian girl is several shades darker and in cultural clothing. This implies that only Russians have whiteness #RussianColonialism”

• ru: Наша дружба – наша сила!

• Kamil Galeev, “National Divorce: Within the next year Russia will spiral into a deep political crisis. There is a nonzero chance that it may scale up existing separatist tendencies leading to the breakup of the empire. In this thread I will outline a model of how this process could look like🧵” (thread) (PDF), 2022-12-08

Europe

• https://twitter.com/OPolianichev/status/1561800195708534788

• https://twitter.com/bektour/status/1572947312686530563 https://twitter.com/CreativeCorazon/status/1572947983469252608

• https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1578178642126856192

• https://unpo.org/article/22195

• https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1583051449432297473

Africa

• Russia is plundering gold in Sudan to boost Putin's war effort in Ukraine
• https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/02/08/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/
• https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/russia-sudan-central-african-republic-mercenaries-kill-hundreds
• https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/05/03/central-african-republic-abuses-russia-linked-forces
• https://www.thedailybeast.com/wagner-group-accused-of-disemboweling-women-in-the-central-african-republic
• https://twitter.com/VlStarodubtsev/status/1583723157986324480
• The Wagner Group's far-right Rusich brigade has carried out a "business trip" to Sierra Leone which included a meeting with Sierra Leone's president A new potential frontier for Russian influence in West Africa
• A short answer to the question of why Tsarist Russia never tried to take part in the scramble for Africa is: it did. A follow-up 🧵 on Russia's uncomfortable colonial past.
• The USSR fought African proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Somalia, Namibia, Tanzania & Congo. Currently, Russian mercenaries are fighting in Libya, Chad & Mali.

Central African Republic

• Final Report on the Murder of Orkhan Dzhemal, Aleksandr Rastogruev and Kirill Radchenko in the Central African Republic
• Putin Wants Fealty, and He’s Found It in Africa [4] (Wagner)
• CAR is officially a Russian colony, with Wagner controlling everything from their puppet President Faustin-Archange Touadéra – Russia is changing the constitution to allow him to stay in power indefinitely – to radio stations as they plunder resources.
• CAR is a Russian colony, much like Mali, Sudan, and other African countries. And Russia, via its implausibly deniable Wagner neo-Nazi front, is massacring natives and plundering resources like it's the 18th-19th century
• Russian Mercenaries Seek Gold, Sow Chaos in Central Africa [5]

Asia

https://twitter.com/jmurtazashvili/status/1598717228966465538

https://twitter.com/b_nishanov/status/1598682545494937604

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Afghanistan_(1979%E2%80%931989)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rauzdi_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padkhwab-e_Shana_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laghman_massacre

https://twitter.com/Vokabre/status/1603039664532774913 Michael Vokabre Dec 14, 2022 Hi, I'm Russian. Chechens fought for independence, federal govt. brutally repressed them and installed a dictator. Albert Razin of Udmurtia commited self-immolation as a protest against RU language policies. Bashkortostani activist Liliya Chanysheva been in prison for 400 days. Koreans, Jews, Armenians and other dispersed people have no recognition within Russia. Few remaining Ainu are not recognized as an indigenous people of the north. It's activists who collected money to send the last Ket language singer Aleksandr Kotusov to a hospital.

Karelian language has no official status within Karelia. Resource extraction is about to happen in Fedorova Tundra, a sacred place for Sami of the north. Nations of Russia and Crimean Tatars of occupied Crimea are disproportionally mobilized to fight Russia's genocidal war.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1573000454984077312

Putin's mobilisation looks asymmetrical:

1. Partial mobilisation in large cities, especially soft in Moscow & Petersburg 2. Total mobilisation in remote rural regions, especially ethnic ones

We don't have hard data yet, this mobilisation may include elements of ethnic cleansing

Anecdotal evidence which yet needs to be confirmed suggests that the list of regions subject to total mobilisation may include Buryatiya, Sahalin, Magadan, etc. In other words, it seems to be disproportionately hitting the Far East