The Russian imperial system has always needed more than territorial control. It has needed control over people, memory, resources and education — and ultimately over the very right of nations to speak for themselves.
Today, this pattern is becoming increasingly visible.
In Yamal, an organisation that once defended Indigenous interests against industrial companies has become increasingly integrated with regional authorities and the oil and gas sector. Independent Indigenous activists in Russia face persecution, while Moscow seeks to restrict their international activity and replace independent representation with structures loyal to the state.
In occupied Ukraine, Russia is simultaneously imposing its own historical narrative, educational system and militarised identity.
These are not isolated episodes.
They are parts of the same system.
Who Has the Right to Speak for a Nation?
One of the most effective tools of imperial rule is the substitution of representation.
An empire finds it far easier to negotiate with a loyal organisation than with an independent movement that questions the very foundations of imperial control.
The history of the “Yamal to its Descendants!” association provides a revealing example.
According to an investigation by Arctida, the organisation was founded in the late Soviet period to defend the political and social interests of Indigenous peoples in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. In its earlier years, it challenged violations by extractive companies, participated in environmental inspections and sought to protect the interests of Indigenous communities.
Its role has since changed substantially.
The organisation now has financial and institutional links with regional authorities and fuel-and-energy companies. Its representatives participate in international events where Russia presents its supposed achievements in supporting Indigenous peoples, while the organisation itself has supported Russian wartime initiatives.
Critics describe this model as a “political pacifier”: an organisation formally representing Indigenous peoples, but increasingly avoiding issues that could conflict with the interests of the authorities and extractive industries.
This is the substitution of representation.
A people appears to have a voice.
But that voice speaks only within the boundaries permitted by the imperial centre.
When Resources Matter More Than Rights
Yamal is particularly revealing because political control is directly connected to resources.
Northern Russia, Siberia and the Far East are extraordinarily rich in oil, gas, minerals and other natural resources. At the same time, these territories are home to numerous Indigenous peoples whose traditional livelihoods depend on land, water, pastures, fishing grounds and the ability to move across traditional territories.
When the state weakens genuine mechanisms of community consent while independent organisations are replaced by state-aligned structures, a classic colonial model emerges:
the territory belongs to the empire — the resources are developed by the empire — decisions are made by the imperial centre — and the local population is left with the role of spectator.
That is why Indigenous rights cannot be separated from the question of Russia’s resource colonialism.
When an Independent Activist Becomes a “Terrorist”
At the same time, Moscow is increasingly suppressing those who attempt to represent Indigenous interests independently of the state.
Correctiv’s investigation describes the long evolution of this policy: from the gradual dismantling of civil-society freedoms in the 2000s to the persecution of Indigenous activists following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The fate of independent organisations cooperating with international institutions is particularly revealing.
According to Correctiv, in 2024 the Aborigen Forum was designated an “extremist” organisation by Russian authorities and was subsequently placed on the list of terrorist organisations. In December 2025, Russian security services carried out coordinated raids on the homes of 17 activists.
The path from defending Indigenous rights to facing prosecution under “terrorism” legislation has therefore become remarkably short.
This is not accidental.
For an imperial system, independent self-organisation by a nation can itself become a threat.
Because an independent organisation creates what an empire fears most:
political agency.
The Kremlin Also Seeks to Control the International Voice
The next level is the international arena.
Russia seeks to present itself to the world as a state in which its Indigenous peoples supposedly enjoy opportunities for cultural and political representation.
But if independent activists cannot operate freely inside Russia, while Moscow promotes state-aligned representatives internationally, a fundamental question arises:
Who actually speaks for the people?
This is not merely a Russian problem.
In international politics, representation creates legitimacy. If the world hears only the voices of organisations approved by the state, it is not necessarily hearing the position of the people. It may simply be hearing the state’s position spoken in the name of the people.
That is why the struggle for independent representation of Indigenous and subjugated nations is part of the broader struggle for decolonisation.
The Same Model Operates in Occupied Ukraine
Ukraine’s experience makes the mechanism even clearer.
In occupied territories, Russia seeks to control not only administrative institutions and security structures. It changes education, textbooks, historical memory, culture and the system of values.
A child is not merely expected to live under Russian rule.
The child is expected to grow into a person who regards that rule as natural.
This is why Russification, historical revisionism and the militarisation of youth are not secondary elements of occupation.
They are part of its long-term objective.
Again, the same sequence appears:
control of territory → control of institutions → control of memory → control of identity.
Crimean Tatars Show the Price of Defiance
This model is particularly visible in occupied Crimea.
The Crimean Tatar people have their own historical experience of deportation, struggle for return and restoration of their rights. Since Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014, Moscow has systematically persecuted Crimean Tatar activists, journalists, human-rights defenders and members of the Crimean Solidarity movement.
Here the empire encounters a people with its own political memory — a people unwilling to accept the role of a silent population in an occupied territory.
Repression therefore becomes a means not merely of punishing individuals, but of destroying horizontal self-organisation.
Resources, Memory and Voice: Three Levels of Imperial Control
Viewed together, these developments reveal a coherent system.
Russia controls resources through a centralised state and corporate structure.
Russia controls memory through education, propaganda and historical revisionism.
Russia seeks to control the voice of nations through repression of independent activists and the creation of loyal forms of representation.
That is why decolonisation cannot be reduced to the question of borders.
It is a much deeper process: restoring political agency to nations.
The right to determine one’s own political future.
The right to speak in one’s own name.
The right to decide what happens to the resources of one’s territory.
The right to preserve one’s language, culture and historical memory.
And ultimately, the right to say:
The empire does not speak for us.
Ukraine and the Future of Decolonisation
For Ukraine, this question has direct strategic significance.
The Russian-Ukrainian war has demonstrated that an empire does not disappear simply because its leader changes. Russian aggression did not begin with Vladimir Putin, and it will not automatically end with his political career.
If the system remains in which Moscow controls the resources of the regions, determines the permissible limits of national self-organisation, rewrites history and speaks on behalf of other peoples, the imperial problem remains.
That is why the decolonisation of Russia is not an abstract theory.
It is a question of European security.
It is, above all, a question of the rights of nations.
The Anti-Imperial Block of Nations operates from precisely this premise: the future of the region should not be determined exclusively by the political centre in Moscow. Representatives of subjugated and threatened nations must have the opportunity to shape their own political future.
Freedom begins when a nation has the right to speak in its own voice.
And decolonisation begins when an empire loses its monopoly over that voice.
