Oleksiy Radynski (CRF 2016) published an essay titled “The Case Against the Russian Federation” in e-flux Journal this week in response to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine.
“By trying to occupy, with brutal military force, its imagined imperial heartland, the Russian Federation initiated a destructive process that may lead to the gradual loss of many more regions and peoples still subjected to its colonial rule. Of course, Ukrainians will fight against Russian imperialist frenzy by any means whatsoever. But merely fighting back is not enough. The growing anti-colonial struggle of the indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation should become the focus of the global antiwar movement. To start with, I suggest that Kyiv accept its thousand-year-old historical responsibility towards the colonized nations oppressed in today’s Russian Federation by belatedly acknowledging itself as the unfortunate origin of a despotic, colonialist Russian state—a state that oppresses every people with the misfortune of being within its territory, including the Russian people. For the sake of all these peoples—and the rest of humankind—the Russian state in its current form should cease to exist… This, in short, is my case against the Russian Federation.”
Click here to read the full essay.
Image: Maria Primachenko, Our Army, Our Protectors, 1978.