#Nagorno Karabakh conflict

[workersolidarity]

💥More Footage out of Nagorno-Karabakh Azeri Offensive💥

And some of the aftermath of arrivals

[captain-price-unofficially]

A 10-year-old Armenian boy loads Kalashnikov cartridges as troops exchange fire with Azeri forces near the village of Adillu in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) on February 24, 1993, during the height of the 1988-1994 First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

[mapsontheweb]

Map of the recent developments in the Armenia - Azerbaijan conflict

[quotesfrommyreading]

This pattern holds across many of the conventional wars since World War II: a conflict over territory and power balance that began with the declaration of those modern states and that has flared intermittently ever since.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, for instance, two countries that also emerged out of the Soviet Union’s breakup, have fought periodic wars ever since, broken by long but tense cease-fires. India and Pakistan fought their first war within months of their independence and partition in 1947, followed by three more wars, most recently in 1999, and repeated lower-level conflicts now held at a tentative nuclear peace. North and South Korea reached an armistice in 1953 but remain in a technical state of war with occasional flare-ups and an ever-present threat of all-out fighting.

Such conflicts, in other words, have often persisted for as many as six or seven decades. With peace talks minimal or nonexistent in many cases, some may well continue longer than that.

And while outright fighting may be infrequent, with what Dr. Radchenko termed “active phases” lasting only a few months, periods of calm typically require deep international involvement to maintain. American troops, for instance, have been garrisoned in South Korea for more than 70 years.

It is impossible to predict whether this represents the future for Russia and Ukraine, though it perhaps already describes their present state. The seven years before Russia’s 2022 invasion were marked by lower-level fighting, with heavy Western diplomacy and support to Ukraine aimed at forestalling wider conflict.

This pattern shows that one side rarely vanquishes the other outright, especially with foreign states ready to step in. And it offers another lesson: Political change within those countries rarely provides the sort of breakthrough that observers are hoping might one day lead Moscow to pull back. The decade-long Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for instance, only deepened with the elevation, in 1985, of the reform-minded leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

  —  What 70 Years of War Can Tell Us About the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

[weepingfireflies]

People & countries mentioned in the thread:

DR Congo - M23, Cobalt

Darfur, Sudan - International Criminal Court, CNN, BBC (Overview); Twitter Explanation on Sudan

Tigray - Human Rights Watch (Ethnic Cleansing Report)

the Sámi people - IWGIA, Euronews

Hawai'i - IWGIA

Syria - Amnesty International

Kashmir- Amnesty Summary (PDF), Wikipedia (Jammu and Kashmir), Human Rights Watch (2022)

Iran - Human Rights Watch, Morality Police (Mahsa/Jina Amini - Al Jazeera, Wikipedia)

Uyghurs - Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) Q&A, Wikipedia, Al Jazeera, UN Report

Tibetans - SaveTibet.org, United Nations

Yazidi people - Wikipedia, United Nations

West Papua - Free West Papua, Genocide Watch

Yemen - Human Rights Watch (Saudi border guards kill migrants), Carrd

Sri Lanka (Tamils) - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch

Afghans in Pakistan - Al Jazeera, NPR

Ongoing Edits: more from the notes / me

Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh/Azerbaijan (Artsakh) - Global Conflict Tracker ("Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"), Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch (Azerbaijan overview), Armenian Food Bank

Baháʼís in Iran - Bahá'í International Community, Amnesty, Wikipedia, Minority Rights Group International

Kafala System in the Middle East - Council on Foreign Relations, Migrant Rights

Rohingya - Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, Al Jazeera, UNICEF

Montagnards (Vietnam Highlands) - World Without Genocide, Montagnard Human Rights Organization (MHRO), VOA News

Ukraine - Human Rights Watch (April 2022), Support Ukraine Now (SUN), Ukraine Website, Schools & Education (HRW), Dnieper River advancement (Nov. 15, 2023 - Ap News)

Reblogs with Links / From Others

Indigenous Ppl of Canada, Cambodia, Mexico, Colombia

Libya

Armenia Reblog 1, Armenia Reblog 2

Armenia, Ukraine, Central African Republic, Indigenous Americans, Black ppl (US)

Rohingya (Myanmar)

More Hawai'i Links from @sageisnazty - Ka Lahui Hawaii, Nation of Hawai'i on Soverignty, Rejected Apology Resolution

From @rodeodeparis: Assyrian Policy Institute, Free Yezidi

From @is-this-a-cool-url: North American Manipur Tribal Association (NAMTA)

From @dougielombax & compiled by @azhdakha: Assyrians & Yazidis

West Sahara conflict

Last Updated: Feb. 19th, 2024 (If I missed smth before this, feel free to @ me to add it)

[cavenewstimes]

How the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been shaped by past empires

Released September 25, 2023 5 minutes checked out When Azerbaijan introduced a military offending previously this month to retake Nagorno-Karabakha mountainous area of the South Caucasus, it reignited the flames of a centuries-old conflict. The Azeri triumph, which triggered countless ethnic Armenian homeowners to leave the areais most likely the last in a series of turbulent fights over who can…

[paulthepoke]

This Week in Prophecy: Yom Kippur 5784/2023, Israeli & Saudi Peace?, Caucasus, Iran Prisoner Swap

This Week in Prophecy: Yom Kippur 5784/2023, Israeli & Saudi Peace?, Caucasus, Iran Prisoner Swap

The Day of Atonement is viewed as the holiest day of Judaism. The day is a Sabbath of rest. Yom Kippur is the only appointment a fast is required. The appointment begins at sun down. It is the last day of the 40 day period of Teshuvah. See Leviticus 16 for details of Yom Kippur/Day of Atonement. https://paulthepoke.com/?s=Yom+Kippur 1 Thessalonians 5:13 While people are saying, “There is peace…

[mariacallous]

It is over and everything is lost. This is the refrain repeated by Armenian families as they take that final step across the border out of their home of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In just a handful of days more than 100,000 people, almost the entire Armenian population of the breakaway enclave, has fled fearing ethnic persecution at the hands of Azerbaijani forces. The world barely registered it. But this astonishing exodus has vanished a self-declared state that thousands have died fighting for and ended a decades-old bloody chapter of history.

On Saturday, along that dusty mountain road to neighbouring Armenia, a few remaining people limp to safety after enduring days in transit.

Among them is the Tsovinar family who appear bundled in a hatchback littered with bullet holes, with seven relatives crushed in the back. Hasratyan, 48, the mother, crumbles into tears as she tries to make sense of her last 48 hours. The thought she cannot banish is that from this moment forward, she will never again be able to visit the grave of her brother killed in a previous bout of fighting.

“He is buried in our village which is now controlled by Azerbaijan. We can never go back,” the mother-of-three says, as her teenage girls sob quietly beside her.

“We have lost our home, and our homeland. It is an erasing of a people. The world kept silent and handed us over”.

She is interrupted by several ambulances racing in the opposite direction towards Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert, or Khankendi, as it is known by the Azerbaijani forces that now control the streets. Their job is to fetch the few remaining Karabakh Armenians who want to leave and have yet to make it out.

“Those left are the poorest who have no cars, the disabled and elderly who can’t move easily,” a first responder calls at us through the window. “Then we’re told that’s it.”

As the world focused on the United Nations General Assembly, the war in Ukraine and, in the UK, the felling of an iconic Sycamore tree, a decades old war has reignited here unnoticed.

It ultimately heralded the end of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Armenian region, that is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but for several decades has enjoyed de facto independence. It has triggered the largest movement of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan has vehemently denied instigating ethnic cleansing and has promised to protect Armenians as it works to reintegrate the enclave.

But in the border town of Goris, surrounded by the chaotic arrival of hundreds of refugees, Armenia’s infrastructure minister says Yerevan was now struggling to work out what to do with tens of thousands of displaced and desperate people.

“Simply put this is a modern ethnic cleansing that has been permitted through the guilty silence of the world,” minister Gnel Sanosyan tells The Independent, as four new busses of fleeing families arrive behind him.

“This is a global shame, a shame for the world. We need the international community to step up and step up now.”

The divisions in this part of the world have their roots in centuries-old conflict but the latest iterations of bitter bloodshed erupted during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh Armenians, who are in the majority in the enclave, demanded the right to autonomy over the 4,400 square kilometre rolling mountainous region that has its own history and dialect. In the early 1990s they won a bloody war that uprooted Azerbaijanis, building a de facto state that wasn’t internationally unrecognised.

That is until in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which originally supported Armenia but in recent years has grown into a colder ally, brokered a fragile truce and deployed peacekeepers.

But Moscow failed to stop Baku in December, enforcing a 10-month blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh, strangling food, fuel, electricity and water supplies. Then, the international community stood by as Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour military blitz that proved too much for Armenian separatist forces. Outgunned, outnumbered and weakened by the blockade, they agreed to lay down their weapons.

For 30 years the Karabakh authorities had survived pressure from international powerhouses to give up statehood or at least downgrade their aspirations for Nagorno-Karabakh. For 30 years peace plans brokered by countries across the world were tabled and shelved.

And then in a week all hope vanished and the self-declared government agreed to dissolve.

Fearing further shelling and then violent reprisals, as news broke several Karabakh officials including former ministers and separatist commanders, had been arrested by Azerbaijani security forces, people flooded over the border.

At the political level there are discussions about “reintegration” and “peace” but with so few left in Nagorno-Karabakh any process would now be futile.

And so now, sleeping in tents on the floors of hotels, restaurants and sometimes the streets of border towns, shellshocked families, with a handful of belongings, are trying to piece their lives together.

Among them is Vardan Tadevosyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s minister of health until the government was effectively dissolved on Thursday. He spent the night camping on the floor of a hotel, and carries only the clothes he is wearing. Exhausted he says he had “no idea what the future brings”.

“For 25 years I have built a rehabilitation centre for people with physical disabilities I had to leave it all behind. You don’t know how many people are calling me for support,” he says as his phone ringed incessantly in the background throughout the interview.

“We all left everything behind. I am very depressed,” he repeats, swallowing the sentence with a sigh.

Next to him Artemis, 58, a kindergarten coordinator who has spent 30 years in Steparankert, says the real problems were going to start in the coming weeks when the refugees outstay their temporary accommodation.

“The Azerbaijanis said they want to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh but how do you blockade a people for 10 months and then launch a military operation and then ask them to integrate?” she asks, as she prepares for a new leg of the journey to the Armenian capital where she hopes to find shelter.

“The blockade was part of the ethnic cleansing. This is the only way to get people to flee the land they love. There is no humanity left in the world.”

Back in the central square of Goris, where families pick through piles of donated clothes and blankets and aid organisations hand out food, the loudest question is: what next?

Armenian officials are busy registering families and sending them to shelters in different corners of the country. But there are unanswered queries about long-term accommodation, work and schooling.

“I can’t really think about it, it hurts too much,” says Hasratyan’s eldest daughter Lilet, 16, trembling in the sunlight as the family starts the registration process.

“All I can say to the world is please speak about this and think about us. We are humans, people made of blood, like you and we need your help.”

[captain-price-unofficially]

Ethnic Kazakh volunteer with a PKT machine gun modified for infantry use in the Armenian side during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

[mapsontheweb]

2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War

by allygorhy

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Hope liberals will start putting the Armenian flag on their porches and sending money to help Armenians buy missile launchers and the EU will roll out the red carpet to Armenian refugees fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh and Vahagn Khachaturyan will get a glossy Vogue cover spread and get invited to speak in front of Congress and Armenian intellectuals will get invited to universities to give lectures on Azerbaijani colonialism only of course that won't happen because who cares if it's not a conflict the US and NATO have an investment in winning

[metamorphesque]

Considering the blissful ignorance with which Armenia is treated by the foreign press, I’ve taken it upon myself to keep you (those who care) updated on what needs to be known.

BACKGROUND

Following years of violations of ceasefire and intimidation against Armenian civilians, Azeri military forces used massive force in September 2020 to invade and occupy two-thirds of Nagorno-Karabakh. In September 2023, Azeri military forces took over the remaining territory, contradicting previously agreed-to negotiations and statements (OSCE peace negotiations, trilateral statements 2020,2021).

While an ethnic cleansing was taking place, the Azeri government arrested eight former members of the Republic’s government and advocates for the self-determination of Artsakh. Those detained include Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian businessman and philanthropist who served as the State Minister of the Artsakh government.

Mr. Vardanyan and the seven others join over 50 Armenians arrested during the conflict, some of whom have been held for years by Azerbaijan. The negligible information on the health and well-being of these prisoners is deeply concerning.

Ruben Vardanyan

In addition to being the State Minister of the Artsakh government, Ruben Vardanyan is an influential Armenian philanthropist who in 2024 was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for the creation and support for around five dozen new and unprecedented educational, charitable, scientific and humanitarian structures not only in Armenia, but also in a number of other countries.

Mr. Vardanyan has been charged with financing terrorism, although the legal situation for him and the others remains unclear and lacks transparency. The charges levied against him are considered completely unsubstantiated and are seen as an act of political retribution.

For this reason, it appears Azerbaijan is holding him as a political prisoner, hindering his ongoing projects and suppressing a voice advocating for progressive and positive change.

“We are gravely concerned about my father’s deteriorating health, though we are not surprised by his bravery," said David Vardanyan, one of Mr. Vardanyan's sons. "Despite our initial relief, my father’s conditions are only worsening. The world has shown Azerbaijan that it is watching the fate of the Armenian prisoners, including my father, and from our family I want to thank everyone for their support at this difficult time. I hope that this growing international attention may lead to his release in the nearest future. We urge the international community to further increase the pressure on Azerbaijan to ensure that at least his trial takes place in May 2024 with international observers.” The State Department’s annual Human Rights Report, released on April 23, corroborated the unjust conditions that Mr. Vardanyan and other political prisoners and detainees face in Azerbaijan. The report on Azerbaijan estimated that the country held approximately 254 political prisoners and detainees as of December 2023. The judiciary was also described as largely corrupt, inefficient, and lacking independence. According to the report, defendants in Azerbaijan were often “denied the right to a presumption of innocence; a fair, timely, and public trial; to communicate with an attorney of their choice; to have adequate time and facilities to prepare a defense; to confront witnesses and present one’s own witnesses and evidence; and not be compelled to testify or confess guilt.”

Today Azerbaijan has extended the detention period of Ruben Vardanyan by 5 months.

HELP FREE RUBEN VARDANYAN Join the international community in calling for Ruben Vardanyan’s release alongside the other Armenians being held in Baku, Azerbaijan.

TAKE ACTION by adding your name to THE LIST of supporters.

[zvaigzdelasas]

A senior Ukrainian official has said that the impact of Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh is being exaggerated as a Russian effort to distract the world’s attention from the war in his country. In an interview with the Moldovan public broadcaster, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that the blockade was being “pumped up” in order to “distract attention from the war in Ukraine and redirect it to other conflict spots so the whole world looks there.” In the interview, the Moldovan presenter framed the blockade in Karabakh as a Russian plot. “Some experts” say that Russia is preparing a “Crimea scenario” for Karabakh, she said to Podolyak, suggesting that the territory’s new de facto leader, Russian-Armenian billionaire Ruben Vardanyan, was sent from Moscow for the purpose. While Armenian sources claim that 120,000 ethnic Armenians are living in Nagorno-Karabakh, “in fact it’s three times smaller,” the presenter claimed, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin used the same tactic of distorting population sizes as part of the process of seizing control of Crimea and other parts of Ukraine.[...]

Podolyak’s reading of the conflict was echoed in a number of other officials’ statements at around the same time. Lyudmila Marchenko, a member of parliament in Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party who has long supported Azerbaijan, gave several interviews in which she made many of the same points. “As an ally of Russia, Armenia is using similar methods to maintain control over Nagorno-Karabakh that Russia does for control over Crimea,” she said in one interview. “Raising the estimates for the quantity of people living in these territories, Vardanyan speaks about 120,000 residents, but by objective assessments there are 40,000 people there.” Another MP from a different party, Igor Popov, wrote an article at the same time also taking issue with the population estimates, and denying altogether that there was a blockade. “Azerbaijani activists are not preventing the transit of civilian and humanitarian transportation,” Popov wrote. “But the leadership of unrecognized Karabakh is using the situation to show shortages of food and the threat of a ‘humanitarian catastrophe,’ and blaming Azerbaijan and the activists for it.”[...]

Ukraine has long taken a pro-Azerbaijan position vis-a-vis the conflict with Armenia. The conflicts share some common patterns, as Armenia and Russia have forcibly taken Azerbaijani and Ukrainian territory, respectively, with the purported aim of unifying their ethnic kin on that territory.

25 Jan 23

21 Feb 23

9 Sep 23

11 Aug 22

I've been told that Ukraine's analogous to Armenia here, while Azerbaijan is analogous to Russia. strange that Ukraine doesn't seem to think so.

[jewish-sideblog]

the rise in antisemitism comes from the same legacy as the queer discourse wars and I’m so serious about that. at some point the internet stopped being a place of collected human knowledge, and started being a place where people could pretend they were experts in subjects they’ve never studied. Every single shred of queer discourse that’s ever been hashed out on this website had already been solved by Queer scholars and advocates by the 1990s. And it’s all being hashed out again on X and TikTok today.

Suddenly everyone has an opinion on Israel and Palestine which is real fucking interesting! Because they’re not suddenly experts in international conflicts or middle eastern studies! There is no great wave of awareness concerning Nagorno-Karabakh. Any shred of knowledge about the actual behavior of Iran’s proxies would prevent any leftist with a shred of dignity from flying the flag of the Houthis or Hezbollah. Yet these people somehow seem to think they know more than the judges on the International Criminal Court.

The internet has become a place where people would rather be right than be accurate and truthful. And often, in order to be completely right, you have to distort the truth. We’ve had all these conversations already. We came to a consensus and a conclusion. There’s no point in arguing these same tired points over and over again for all eternity, except to make the undereducated feel superior.

[sky-daddy-hates-me]

Before I knew about the genocide in Palestine I learnt about the one ongoing in West Papua.

I will always make sure that people hear me at least mention that while Indonesia opposes the genocide Israel is commiting they are commiting their own against the indigenous tribes, some of which are fighting against modern warfare tech with spears.

I will always mention that Sudan is undergoing its own genocide. As a strong ally of Palestine many Palestinian refugees sought safety in Sudan in previous years, however in April/May last year 281 Palestinians were evacuated from Sudan by the Palestinian Embassy because of the ethnic killings of the Masalit people.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been a long time ally of Israel, which isn't surprising when the multiple conflicts that have happened and are still happening has led to 6 million people being killed since 1996 in the DRC.

Armenia, also a supporter of Palestine, is facing a genocide from Azerbaijan. Just last year 200+ civillians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region were injured by invading Azerbaija, and over 100,000 civilians were forced to flee.

Myanmar is also a longtime supporter of Israel, and Israels influence can clearly be seen in the Myanmar government's brutal attacks on the Rohingya people.

China, who has undoubtedly helped push for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, isn't innocent either. There is an ongoing genocide being committed against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.

In Ethiopia its estimated that at least 800,000 people have been killed in Tigray by Ethiopian Government forces.

[mariacallous]

In May, pro-independence demonstrations spread across New Caledonia, a small Pacific island territory that has been ruled by France since 1853. Waving the flags of the Indigenous Kanak people as well as the flag of the pro-independence Socialist National Liberation Front, demonstrators took to the streets to protest voting reform measures that would give greater political power to recently arrived Europeans.

Curiously, however, they also waved another flag—that of Azerbaijan. Although the similar colors of the New Caledonian and Azerbaijani flags led some to speculate whether the demonstrators had inadvertently acquired the wrong flag, other observers viewed the presence of the Azerbaijani flag as an indication of ideological support from Baku.

It turns out, the Azerbaijani flags were not mistaken. Since March 2023, Baku has strategically cultivated support for the New Caledonian independence movement under the guise of anti-colonial solidarity. As payback for French diplomatic backing of Armenia after Azerbaijan’s 2020 invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku has disseminated anti-French disinformation related to New Caledonia. Following the outbreak of protests this May, France publicly accused Azerbaijan of doing so.

Baku’s influence campaign successfully inflamed long-simmering hostilities toward French descendants in New Caledonia, culminating in violent demonstrations and riots, which triggered a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron—as well as French police forces—even though Macron ultimately issued a de facto suspension of the reforms.

The incident in New Caledonia is hardly an isolated one. Anti-colonialism, which rose as a powerful ideological force during the 1960s and 1970s, is having a resurgence, and its philosophical underpinnings continue to shape some of the biggest geopolitical crises of the day, from Gaza to Ukraine. But unlike the decolonization movements of the Cold War era, this wave is being driven by opportunistic illiberal regimes that exploit anti-colonial rhetoric to advance their own geopolitical agendas—and, paradoxically, their own colonial-style land grabs.

The basic aims of the decolonization movement during the Cold War were twofold: securing national independence for countries colonized by the West and preserving sovereignty for postcolonial countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, whether through armed struggle or ideological diplomacy. Focused on ending the Vietnam War and fighting white minority rule in southern Africa, the movement quickly became the cause célèbre of the international left.

Despite divergent views on economic and social issues, the movement’s proponents coalesced around a central belief that Western imperialism, particularly the U.S. variant, singlehandedly held back the advancement and development of what was then known as the third world—ignoring the fact that many anti-colonial movements often had their own internal issues of graft and corruption. Disheartened by the West’s history of imperialism, many on the left even embraced authoritarian leaders, such as Zimbabwe’s anti-colonial freedom fighter-turned-despot Robert Mugabe and even former North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung.

Today, the anti-colonial movement is less about securing independence for the few remaining colonial outposts or debating the proper developmental pathway for countries in the global south. Bolstered by powerful state-backed media corporations in the capitals of authoritarian states, the current movement is largely a Trojan horse for the advancement of global illiberalism and a revision of the international rules-based order.

Authoritarian governments in Eurasia have taken their influence operations to social media, where they hope to inflame grievances—possibly into actual conflicts—to divert the attention of Washington and its allies from areas of strategic importance. This is the case for not only Azerbaijan, but also for China in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Iran, which provides financial support to anti-Israel protest groups in the United States.

But more than any other country, it is Russia that is attempting to ride the resurgent anti-colonial wave and position itself as a leading voice of the global south. Russian leadership describes itself as the vanguard of the “global majority” and claims to be leading “the objective process of building a more just multipolar world.”

After his visit to Pyongyang in June, Putin wrote in North Korea’s main newspaper that the United States seeks to impose a “global neo-colonial dictatorship” on the world. In the United States, several Russians alleged by prosecutors to be intelligence agents have been accused of funneling financial support to an anti-colonial Black socialist group to promote pro-Russian narratives and justify Russia’s illegal military actions in Ukraine. And in regard to New Caledonia, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova fanned the flames when she said in May that the tensions there stemmed “from the lack of finality in the process of its decolonization.”

Moscow’s primary stage to project itself as the spearhead of a new global anti-colonial movement is Africa. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union provided ideological and military support to numerous national liberation movements and anti-colonial struggles in sub-Saharan Africa on the grounds of proletarian internationalism and socialist solidarity. According to a declassified 1981 CIA report, Namibia’s SWAPO guerilla group received nearly all of its arms from the Soviet Union, and Soviet military personnel trained South African anti-apartheid guerrillas in Angola-based training camps. Moscow also trained and educated a large number of African independence fighters and anti-colonial rebels at Communist Party schools and military institutes back in the Soviet Union.

This legacy of Soviet internationalism and socialist goodwill generated lingering sympathy for the Kremlin, and Russia continues to be widely perceived as a torchbearer of anti-colonial justice and national independence on the continent, particularly in the Francophone Sahel region. Before his death in August 2023, former Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin blamed instability in the Sahel on Western interventionism, saying, “The former colonizers are trying to keep the people of African countries in check. In order to keep them in check, the former colonizers are filling these countries with terrorists and various bandit formations. Thus creating a colossal security crisis.”

Despite Moscow’s own imperialist legacy and its current war of recolonization in Ukraine, Russia is increasingly seen as an anti-Western stalwart in the Sahel and a key supporter of anti-French political movements. Kremlin-backed mercenaries from the Wagner Group’s successor, Africa Corps, have supplanted French security services as the primary counterinsurgency force for fragile West African governments. And in addition to the counter-insurgency operations, Russian mercenaries have provided personal protection for key African military and government leaders.

But the shift from French to Russian interventionism in the Sahel raises the question of just how much national sovereignty the governments in the affected countries have.

Military juntas in West Africa exploit anti-French sentiments among the general public in order to obscure the fact that they are merely relying on a different foreign state for regime security, effectively trading one colonialist power for another. Most importantly for the juntas, unlike the French, the Russian security forces have no qualms about violently cracking down on political dissent and committing war crimes. For example, in late March 2022, Russian mercenaries assisted the Malian military in summarily executing around 300 civilians in the Malian town of Moura, according to Human Rights Watch.

With its colonial baggage, France has struggled to penetrate pro-Russian propaganda in its former African colonies. For instance, Afrique Média, an increasingly popular Cameroon-based television network, often echoes the Kremlin’s positions on international events. In April 2022, Afrique Média promoted a Russia-produced propaganda video that depicted a Russian mercenary escaping his African jihadi captors and then revealing U.S, and French flags behind an Islamic State flag, suggesting that these Western countries are supporting religious extremists.

Russia’s anti-colonial crusade belies its efforts to advance its own political and economic interests. Moscow’s efforts in Africa are borne from a desire to undercut Western influence in the region; shore up diplomatic support for itself in multilateral forums, such as the United Nations; and reinstate Russia’s reputation as a global superpower. Moscow may also seek to secure access to Africa’s vast natural resources, including criterial minerals, and take advantage of illicit networks, such as illegal gold mining, to circumvent international sanctions and fund its war in Ukraine.

Authoritarian regimes, including those in Russia, China, and Azerbaijan, would not exploit anti-colonial rhetoric if it did not continue to resonate in the global south. Long-standing economic disparities with the global north and painful histories of Western interventionism, especially the post-9/11 U.S. wars in the Middle East, have fostered sympathy for revisionist authoritarian regimes. The current humanitarian crisis in Gaza has heightened feelings of Western hypocrisy among some commentators and public figures in the global south.

As Kenyan journalist Rasna Warah explains, “There is deep sympathy and support [in the West] for Ukrainians who are being bombed and made homeless by Russia but Palestinians being killed and being denied food and water are seen as deserving of their fate.”

Therefore, it is crucial for Western governments to acknowledge the shortcomings of the current international liberal order to governments in the global south, rather than attempting to gaslight them into believing that it is equitable and just. The Western-led international order has a long history of violence and instability in the developing world. The trauma of Western imperialism and colonialism should not be forgotten but rather reworked into developmental programs that help to build robust institutions and infrastructure in the global south.

For example, Germany’s joint declaration with Namibia in 2021, which acknowledged the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples between 1904 and 1908, committed $1.2 billion over the next 30 years to funding aid projects in Namibia, which are more likely to have a long-lasting positive effect on the development of Namibian institutions than individual financial handouts to descendants of colonial-era violence.

In the near term, the United States and its Western allies should actively counter propaganda from Baku, Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing that seeks to portray these nations as free from interventionist pasts. Exposing their disinformation campaigns in the global south—starting with labeling social media accounts linked to state-run media—could help to alert the public to the presence of bad-faith actors, who exploit genuine anti-colonial grievances for their own political and economic goals.

While the Soviets were certainly no saints, there was a genuine internationalist and collectivist spirit in their interactions with the Cold War anti-colonial movement. The same cannot be said for Russia today.