Also, there are divergent reactions to the news of Navalny's death. He was both an opposition leader and a staunch Russian nationalist. I don't think these two elements contradict each other but mutually support each other. Ukrainians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Kalmyks, etc. 1/ have been victims of Navalny's brand of nationalistic opposition politics. His comments and views on "blacks," which I need to contextualize here as targeting people from Central Asia and the Caucasus, not necessarily the African diaspora or Africans, were racist. 2/

This isn’t solely a Russian culture issue. The British, the French, the German Reich, and the American imperial projects have all done the same, and still do. There is a wealth of literature written by people from the Global South who have been colonized and victimized 1/

https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1679743898439000064

by the same European powers that Ukraine sees as anchors of “European civilization” and “freedom” against Russia. De-colonization is a process of introspection as well as excision. These issues run deep, and engagement with and learning from those countries and peoples who have

Okay, major developments:
-conformation that Wagner has taken the Southern Military Command District
-Wagner downed a Russian Air Force plane in Voronezh
-Putin called this treachery, Prigozhin said Wagner are the real patriots.
-Rapid advances w/success for Wagner 1/ My tweet from yesterday. I cannot emphasize how surprising it is that Putin allowed Wagner to operate the way it has because of his fear of military-led coups.

https://twitter.com/ksvarnon/status/1672348983962771456

I have a lot of feelings about this day, both Orthodox Easter and the second month of the Russian war in Ukraine. I am constantly thinking about how this war highlights the myriad of inequities and accepted forms of barbarity in international and western institutions. 1 The slow roll out of sanctions against Russia, the limited sanctions against Russian oligarchs, the continued European purchasing of Russian oil and gas show how the needs and demands of capital trump the human. 2

"The Devil's cleverest wile is to make men believe that he does not exist." This is Russian imperial history. I don't have time to go over ALL of Russian colonization and imperialism, so here are some highlights: 1/n Siberia: Siberia is home to a myriad of indigenous groups who practice(d) pagan and naturalist religions. Throughout the 16th-19th centuries, the Russian imperial state used settler colonialism to Russify these areas and to force the indigenous peoples to become Orthodox.