Former Georgian Prosecutor General Otar Romanov-Partskhaladze has created a “volunteer” unit in Russia called the “St. George” unit to participate in the war against Ukraine. Its name is symbolically linked to the Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783, which placed the Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti under Russian protection.
For ABN, however, this story is about more than one collaborator.
The Russian Empire has repeatedly used the same mechanism: subjugate one people, cultivate a loyal elite among them, and then use that elite against another people.
Representatives of conquered nations were repeatedly incorporated into imperial armies and sent to fight other nations resisting Russian expansion. Today, Moscow is once again trying to turn people from societies dominated by Russia into a resource for its war against Ukraine.
It is a classic imperial technology: subjugated peoples are made to fight other subjugated nations.
Yet this strategy contains a fundamental contradiction. Moscow can recruit collaborators, purchase the loyalty of elites and exploit historical ties. But none of this makes the empire permanent.
On the contrary, the more Moscow uses other peoples for its imperial wars, the more obvious the question becomes: why should these nations fight for an empire that has denied them the right to determine their own future?
Moscow built its empire for centuries through the hands of subjugated nations. Its eventual decolonisation will begin when those peoples reclaim the right to decide whom they fight for — and what future they want for themselves.
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