Several Africans were injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on Tatarstan. Russia is now exploiting the attack to spark anti-Ukrainian feelings. If anything, however, this incident can elucidate a gendered and racialized reality behind Russia's charm offensive in Africa. 🧵 "I'm from Kenya. I'm a person of color (...) Those who attacked our hostel today are real barbarians," the person on the video says. They are one of the participants of the "Alabuga Start" program, launched in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. 2/

https://x.com/sezalabuga/status/1775457640060973300?s=20

This quote perfectly encapsulates Putin's arguments for war on Ukraine. Show it to any Russia sympathizer, in academia or beyond, and they will say it's a great explanation of why Russia is right – or not entirely wrong – invading Ukraine.
There's a small problem, however: 👇 This quote has nothing to do with either Ukraine or Russia. We've been there, haven't we?

A 1886 city map of Bukhara, the capital of a Tsarist protectorate in Central Asia. The map was part of a secret Russian report to the General Staff that recommended capturing the city, razing its center to the ground, and abolishing the semblance of the colony's independence.🧵 The importance of Bukhara was immense, the author argued. It was the last remnant of Central Asia's bygone greatness. Worse still, it was a "hearth of Islam." The "flame," he argued, "can only be extinguished and covered in blood; the hearth itself, (...) must be scattered ... 2/

I'm writing a book on Ukraine under Russian rule, and here's what I have to say. This situation is radically different from Ukraine's Soviet or tsarist experience. This is Russia's fascist moment of the interwar type, although postponed for a century. 🧵

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1764598144497512613

It originates in the discourses about national rejuvenation and degeneration, frustration over the post-imperial arrangement and the liberal order, dissatisfaction with the national borders ... 2/

In anticipation of a quick victory, Russia’s flagship news show “Vesti nedeli” gives the domestic audience two reasons of why Russia invaded Ukraine: to reshape the world and to eliminate the artificial Ukrainian nation. 1/ The Kremlin's chief propagandist Dmitry Kiselev says that Russia's primary goal is the imposition of a new world order (“novaia konstruktsiia mira”). The message “Bor'ba za mir” is intentionally ambivalent. It means both “a struggle for peace” and “a struggle for the world.” 2/

Let's talk about "peace." Russia invaded Ukraine in the name of "peace." In the early phase of the war, "For peace" was its main slogan.
Few seem to remember that the *previous guy* who sent tanks to redraw the borders of Eastern Europe used exactly the same rhetoric.🧵 One may recall that while the preparations for the invasion of Poland were underway, the Nazis were busy planning a "Rally for Peace" in Nuremberg. "For Germany," as Hitler said in his famous Wilhelmshaven speech in April 1939, "does not dream of attacking other nations." 2/

Russia's Federal Archival Agency has published a collection of documents "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" to substantiate Putin's wild allegations made in his 2021 article of the same name.
A 🧵you don't want to read: This is an extraordinary book, even by Russia's academic standards. Naturally, it opens with Putin's article, which many believe – and rightfully so – to have served as a rationale for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 2/

Dmitry Medvedev has authored a "scholarly" article on the history of Poland's relations with Russia, calling it an "enemy" and threatening it with war.
It's a long (and boring) read, and we have every reason to suspect he isn't the real author. Who wrote it? I know the answer.🧵 Let's look at the footnotes. Medvedev claims to have consulted an issue of the Pravda newspaper from November 25, 1989. He quotes the Polish Prime-minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki here: 2/

“Global support for the war is shrinking,” @TIME says. Indeed, now that “Ukraine fatigue” is everywhere, Russia feels emboldened to carry on with solving the Ukrainian question for good. But what happens if a peace treaty is signed? An op-ed in RIA Novosti explains it all. 🧵 Last June, the RIA Novosti author Viktoriia Nikiforova published an important text, which nearly everyone missed. In it, she argued that peace was in Russia's best interests. The reason? Empire building takes time. 2/

Russia unleashed horror upon the Kharkiv region. Yesterday, it fired an Iskander missile at the village of Hroza, murdering half the villagers (52 people) in a blink of an eye. Today, it launched two missiles at downtown Kharkiv. There's one thing everyone should be aware of: 🧵 Kharkiv was the 5th region of Ukraine that Russia planned to annex one year ago through a sham referendum. It never happened: during the swift Ukrainian counter-offensive last September, almost the entire region was liberated in a matter of days. 2/

Since March 2022, German academic relationships with Russian institutions have been suspended. Now the boycott begins to crack. A public German university renews collaboration with a state university in Russia, notorious for its support for the invasion. Read on.🧵 Media outlets in Russia's Karelia are spreading the news that run counter to everything the EU has said and done in response to the Russian invasion. Offenburg University in Germany has offered Petrozavodsk State University to restore their official partnership. 2/

One of the most resonant initiatives announced on the hills of the recent Russia-Africa Summit was the the construction of 30 settlements for African settlers across Russia. A closer look at the project, however, reveals its fundamental preoccupation with race and whiteness.🧵 Earlier in August, the village of Porech'e in the Tver province saw an unusual ceremony. Local authorities and some high-ranking African diplomats laid the cornerstone of what is meant to become "Afrovillage" – the first exclusively African settlement in Russia. 2/

The Russian army has never showed up anywhere near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, but this didn't stop Russian officials from creating a database of its buildings to proclaim them the property of Russia. Let's take a look at Russia's "paper annexation" of Zaporizhzhia. 👇 Russia's Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography, "Rosreestr," has included Zaporizhzhia in its real estate database. This means that the entire city, with all its streets and buildings, is listed there as belonging to Russia. Take this example: 2/

One surprising thing about this metaphor is its longevity. In 1861, in a confidential letter to War Minister Dmitry Miliutin, which I was lucky to find in Moscow, one senior official compared Ukrainian speakers with "an ulcer on the body of the Russian Land." What was the cure?👇

https://twitter.com/DafnaRachok/status/1688639550246027264

His plan was to mix them with Russian speakers and to weaken the Ukrainian gentry as much as possible. The Ukrainian elites were seen as the source of all evil. Because of them, he wrote, the "spirit of hatred towards the Muscovites" reigned among ordinary people. 2/

In Zaporizhzhia, a large urban center in Ukraine the size of Oslo, hundreds of thousands of people are living their daily lives without knowing that Russian school maps portray their hometown as an ordinary city in Russia, not unlike Kursk or Tula. Here's what these maps show: 1/ The Russian army has never been anywhere close to Zaporizhzhia. And yet, the Russian teaching portal YaKlass, widely used in school curricula, has updated its maps to include both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. 2/

The Russian army strikes a dam to hinder the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Kherson region? This happened not only to the Kakhovka dam. And yes, Russia wrote about it in glowing tones.
While speaking about the Kakhovka disaster, don't forget there was an earlier precedent. 1/ On September 14, 2022, as AFU were advancing towards Kherson and established a bridgehead across the Inhulets River, several Russian cruise missiles targeted the dam of the Karachun Reservoir near Kryvyi Rih. 2/

Lots of people, myself included, have been censored by Twitter for writing about Ukraine. I've spent quite some time in imperial archives exploring how writings about Ukraine were censored in Tsarist Russia, so here're my short historical censorship guide for those concerned: 1. Search for the word "Ukraine" in the first place. Normally, tsarist censorship changed it to "Little Russia," "South Region," or "South-West Region" (for Kyiv, Volhynia, and Podolia provinces). Besides, any publication can be considered "tendentious" if it is...

While @UN invites us to celebrate Russian Language Day (the birthday of Alexander Pushkin) at the time when a major catastrophe is unfolding in Ukraine, it's a good time to remember that Pushkin's birthday was often used as an occasion to celebrate empire. 1/

https://twitter.com/UN/status/1665932022160965632

On this day, in 1899, Russian imperial society in tsarist Tiflis, today's Tbilisi, organized festivities to commemorate the centenary of his birth. Pushkin was a powerful symbol that made Russian incomers feel at home in the Caucasus. 2/

Olga Skabeeva, Russia's propagandist-in-chief, calls for the extermination of all human beings in the Kharkiv region as a way to finally solve the Ukrainian question. It's a major departure from the more traditional genocidal rhetoric that accompanied Russia's invasion. 🧵 1/

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1665235585324154883

Normally, this rhetoric implied the extermination of those unable or unwilling to be "re-educated" into Russians. According to the Russian revanchist tradition, Ukraine and the Ukrainian identity is an "anti-Russian" political project invented by the West to destroy Russia. 2/

Decolonization thread.
I have my own reservations about "decolonial" epistemologies and the language of the "decolonization," but this is a straw man. Not only do many contributors to the debate specialize in Islamic/Central Asian/Middle Eastern (not "Slavic") studies, but hardly any of them would go on to claim that different iterations of Russian statehood constituted "one consistent imperial project." There is no "trajectory" because there is still no agreement even on the question of what "decolonization" might actually mean for the field.

It is often believed that Imperial Russia had no settled black population. In the empire's south, however, there were villages inhabited by people of African descent. What do we know about them?
A 🧵 on the tsarist black subjects. 1/ In fin-de-siècle Russia, the Black Sea coast of the South Caucasus was one of the most popular tourist destinations. A growing number of leisure travellers came from the north to the warmest part of the empire to relax on the sea and enjoy the view of the mountains. 2/