Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov published an article in four African newspapers last month. In it, he tried to explain the purpose of his recent tour of Africa, as well as why, in his opinion, African countries should support Moscow's war against Ukraine..

Lavrov argued that Western sanctions are the cause of the food crisis in Africa. At the same time, he stressed that, unlike Great Britain, France, Belgium and other European states, Russia " The idea that Russia ostensibly escaped colonial expansion is remarkably common in the West and elsewhere in the world, Casey Michel, a fellow at the Hudson Institute's kleptocracy initiative, writes in an article for the Wall Street Journal..

But the suggestion that the Kremlin allegedly did not commit the same bloody crimes as the Dutch, Spanish or Portuguese empires is as much ridiculous as it is ahistorical.. Russia did not just appear like an intercontinental giant, stretching to the Pacific Ocean. Moscow has been conquering and colonizing peoples in Eurasia for centuries, plundering and subjugating them to dictatorships in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The only difference is that the European empires carried out colonization overseas, and Russia - on land, capturing adjacent territories.

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Too many people do not know or ignore the fact that Russia was and remains the main colonial state. From the Caucasus to the Crimea, from the Arctic to the Amur, from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean, Russian colonial campaigns conquered numerous peoples, destroying local cultures, sovereignties and committing genocides. The USSR, which by Vladimir Lenin's definition was anti-imperialist, behaved the same way. From organizing mass ethnic cleansing to destroy colonized peoples, to creating artificial famines against Ukrainians and Kazakhs, and creating maps with supposedly autonomous republics in which the local population had no power - Soviet experiments, from many points of view, simply continued the colonial policy of the Russian Empire.. And this is not to mention how the USSR during the Cold War supported despotic regimes in African and Latin American countries, for example, in Angola and Cuba..

While post-Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan and Moldova were able to gain independence after the fall of the USSR, colonized peoples within Russian borders such as Chechnya and Tatarstan were once again oppressed by the Kremlin's dictatorship.. They were turned into a source of cannon fodder for Moscow's imperialism..

“The war in Ukraine has clearly demonstrated that Russia remains a colonial state that seeks to regain control of all those who escaped from its grip.. Most European states let their empires fall apart. But one European colonial empire still exists. And this single European empire is now threatening genocide and potential nuclear war if it is not allowed to reclaim its lost colonies..

Propaganda convinces that Russia allegedly remains a force for good. But many Russians would be shocked if they realized that Moscow is no better than the Portuguese for Angola or the Spaniards for Mexico.. Researchers Erika Marat and Botagoz Kasimbekova pointed to Russia's " It is also a convenient defensive position when photos and videos of war crimes, mutilations and attempts to commit genocide in Ukraine associated with the Russian army emerge.. Like, if the Kremlin is fighting only to save people from Western imperialism, then the Russians must be fighting against the Ukrainian imperialists to save the “oppressed population”.

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“But it is high time for Russians to come to terms with the colonial crimes of their past and present.. Without understanding that Russia was and remains as guilty as all the colonial empires of the past, the madness in Ukraine will not stop.. Until Russia is fully decolonized, it will be a threat to global stability and security,” writes Michel.

He notes that in Washington and other Western capitals there are signs of understanding of the need to decolonize Russia.. But the whole world, including Moscow itself, still needs to recognize what the Russian Federation was and still is.. Colonization may seem like a step backwards. But when a colonial empire is waging its colonial war in plain sight, and people like Lavrov are trying to get everyone to look the other way, the least you can do is call a spade a spade..