Opinion

Colonising Eastern Europe

photo_camera Vladimir Putin

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and thus NATO and the European Union, have only increased in recent months. When analysing the possible escalation of the conflict between these two former Soviet republics, the first thing to bear in mind is that this conflict has been active for years in the border region of Donbass, in the east of the country, as documented in the film 'Donbass, Survival Manual in 12 Lessons' or 'The Life of Oleg'. On the other hand, it is necessary to take a broader view of this conflict and not reduce it to ethnic issues, as this conflict has a larger geopolitical backdrop, which is none other than the struggle for Russia's 'Lebensraum'. Russia, under increasing pressure from NATO and due to its regenerationist and imperial project, is seeking to regain its former areas of influence. At the same time, the main loser, Ukraine, has become a no-man's land, a mere physical support where all negotiating efforts are concentrated, without even the country's president, Volodymir Zelinsky, which is rather unfortunate for the Ukrainians.

However, there is one element that is not often mentioned when discussing this conflict, and that is the colonial element that underlies Vladimir Putin's neo-imperial project. Russia, on the basis of the need to have a security belt made up of allied republics and, using a series of arguments based on ethnicity or certain cultural affinities - language or a more than vitiated common past - sets itself up as the ultimate spokesperson for the interests of those citizens who, being Russian, find themselves under the sovereignty of hostile Western states. In this way, through an emotional rhetoric that uses terms related to brotherhood, purity of blood or the existence of a common Slavic project, Russian nationalism creates a homogenous mass of Russian citizens scattered across Europe and the Caucasus with the same interests and facing the same threat: the West. It does not matter whether we are talking about the Republic of South Ossetia in Georgia, the Crimean Peninsula or the border areas of the three Baltic Republics.

Here we observe the pernicious mechanism of coloniality, which is none other than the denial of the voice of others, in this case, the inhabitants of all the republics resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In short, the Russian state led by Vladimir Putin sets itself up as the representative of these peoples, defines them negatively in contrast to the West, and mobilises the most nationalist sectors to destabilise these republics. The pattern of domination and denial is repeated, and what is worse, it is reproduced in Western instances by being perceived in the same way, which allows a dialogue to continue on a geopolitical scale that justifies the reification of all these individuals and deprives them of their particularity, allowing this type of tension to be resolved without there being a truly committed involvement with the citizens of these republics.

The point I want to get at is this: on whose behalf are the negotiations taking place? Who are those who are really harmed by being outside Russia's borders? Are they the real stakeholders in all these conflicts taking place? Are these republics akin to Russia or are they nothing more than colonies, with Moscow acting as a metropolis? What order will be tried to impose in Kazakhstan after the protests that are currently taking place? Who will be given a voice? The answer to these questions leads us to consider that post-coloniality, while different from its predecessor, continues to play a fundamental role in international relations, making a look at it all the more necessary today. At the same time, the Russian example breaks with the dishonourable exclusivity that Western powers enjoyed in this respect, for although it has its origins in Russia, post-coloniality has spread across the globe, as exemplified by China's penetration of Africa.

In short, post-coloniality represents an evil - that of domination and denial of the other - that is not inherent in human nature, but rather corresponds to the way in which international politics is structured, both legally and economically. Nevertheless, these logics continue to be reproduced and to affect millions of people around the world, except that the poles of power have been distributed and we now find new actors and new formulas of post-coloniality unfolding on territories that are new in this respect. We find ourselves, as the writer Frantz Fanon once coined it, with new condemned of the earth, but this time in Eastern Europe.