Trying to Reassemble the Russian Empire: The Impact of Russian Aggression in Ukraine on Its Own Future
After Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, all sprouts of democracy and federalism were gradually phased out, and neo-imperialist and nationalist sentiments grew, which found their current form in the ideology of the “Russian World.” This ideological concept combines the imperial idea of “gathering” the former Soviet republics under Moscow's rule with the chauvinistic idea of the “missionary and civilizing” role of the Russian people. However, in the long term, Moscow's appeal to Russian nationalism is more likely to alienate not only neighboring states, but may also provoke centrifugal forces within Russia itself.
The curtailment of the rights of ethnic minorities and national republics has led to the strengthening of assimilation processes among peoples primarily dispersed in the body of the Russian Federation (Finno-Ugric peoples, peoples of the Volga region). But, in the frontier Russian republics (in the North Caucasus and Siberia), the opposite ethno-demographic processes – the mass exodus of ethnically Russian population and growth of indigenous peoples – have been taking place in recent decades. According to census data, in the 2010s, of the 21 republics within the Russian Federation, the share of indigenous peoples grew in 13, and in 11 indigenous peoples constitute the majority of the population.
The full-scale war against Ukraine launched by Russia in 2022 only intensified the internal contradictions between the Russian ethnic majority and ethnic minorities, which we could see for example during the partial mobilization in the autumn of 2022, when the pockets of resistance were precisely the national regions.