Erica Marat
@EricaMarat
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Professor @NDU_CISA . Adjunct @georgetown . Opinions/RXs do not represent positions or policies of NDU, DOD or USG. She/her
Washington, DC
Joined July 2009
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📚 Happy to announce that my book “Transformative Violence: When Routine Cruelty Sparks Historic Mobilization” is finally out! It shows how & when societies mobilize against systemic violence. Discount code ASFLYQ6
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“The hundreds of thousands of Russians who fled the country over the past year have not staged any major anti-war rallies while in exile, despite no longer being subject to draconian Kremlin restrictions” Powerful from
@BotakozKassymb1
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Z salutes by students at a shopping mall in Kazan. Fascism has gone mainstream.
via
@nexta_tv
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Kazakhstan has now explained that the May 9 parade is not feasible because the priority is to maintain combat readiness of the armed forces to ensure protection and defense of gov and military facilities. Hands down, this is bold.
Kazakhstan won’t hold victory parade on May 9. Significant symbolic gesture that points at how the war in Ukraine undermines Russia-centric view of the Soviet history
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It’s understandable why Russians fear speaking out against the war. But why influential cultural and political elites who fled the country are silent? Chubais, Sobchak, Pugacheva and the likes are all silent.
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Almost six months into the invasion no evident anti-war movement among Russians at home or abroad. We used to be amazed by how officials in Moscow remain compliant. What explains lack of effort among the diaspora?
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Waiting for Navalny, Kara-Murza, and Khodorkovsky to acknowledge that Russia’s chief problem is genocidal imperialism, not corruption
Alexey Navalny's team of investigators has released a new film about Putin's ex-wife (whose alleged secret LiveJournal page from the 2000s is still up). The film takes a look at the millions of dollars she and her husband have received in recent years.
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Incredible how Kara-Murza has a prescription for the west on lifting sanctions and so little to offer on how to mobilize Russians against their own regime.
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I’m glad that Russian imperialism and not just putinism is becoming the commonplace explanation of the war
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I support Ukrainian and Georgian students who think inviting Navalnaya was a mistake.
Navalny “called immigrants ‘cockroaches,’ used gay slurs and only recently said he believes Crimea” is Ukraine. He used many other slurs and never apologized.
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“Time to Question Russia’s Imperial Innocence” — is one of the most important pieces I’ve co-authored with the amazing
@BotakozKassymb1
. The Russian war in Ukraine forced decolonial discourse into the mainstream and we are here to discuss🧵
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Impressive show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people in Kazakhstan 🇺🇦🇰🇿
In Almaty, Kazakhstan, people gathered in protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Like a clock since 2022
Student: NATO violated the Warsaw pact by expanding east
Me: Countries are free to decide what alliances to join
S: Russia has the right to protect against the west
Me: Does this justify genocidal invasion?
S: But US invasions…
Me: Nope, wahtaboutism…✋
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Kazakhstan is not Belarus where the regime will kill and torture to stay in power, not Kyrgyzstan where the government falls apart in an instant, not Ukraine where civil society is strong. 1/
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Why is Tajikistan more interested in escalating conflict with Kyrgyzstan? A short and simple 🧵
Tajikistan's pres Rakhmon has been in power for 30 years and will promote his uncharismatic son Rustam to his place. Rakhmon jailed/killed all opposition, including activists abroad
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What radicalized many russified non-Russians like myself is not just Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — although it’s enough of a reason in itself — but the continuous imperial innocence among Russians and russofiles in the West. 1/3
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Disgusting to see Navalny’s supporters slandering Ukrainians every chance they get.
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Correct me if I’m wrong: Kazakhstan MoD has basically said that instead of celebrating Soviet Russian May 9 version of the V-day, they are instead preparing for a now plausible Russian “special operation” scenario on their territory ✊🏼
Kazakhstan has now explained that the May 9 parade is not feasible because the priority is to maintain combat readiness of the armed forces to ensure protection and defense of gov and military facilities. Hands down, this is bold.
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Yesterday wasn’t the first time Kazakhstan openly recognized territorial integrity of Ukraine, but the first time Tokayev said it to Putin’s face. Kremlin won’t let it go, watch propaganda outlets work extra hard in the next few days/weeks.
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Navalny team’s attack on NAFO shows how 500 days of genocide didn’t make them rethink deeply Russia’s imperial identity. No hope there’ll be change any time soon.
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This is a huge decolonial move by the Qazaq state: opening up archives from the stalin era, revealing atrocities of the soviet regime, and allowing families to find closure. Hope other Central Asian states follow the example.
В Казахстане рассекретили более 2,4 миллиона архивных карточек жертв политических репрессий, охватывающих 1929-1956 годы, пишет
@villagekz
со ссылкой на Генеральную прокуратуру РК.
За годы репрессий в лагеря Казахстана поместили более пяти миллионов человек.
(1/4)
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Kazakhstan won’t hold victory parade on May 9. Significant symbolic gesture that points at how the war in Ukraine undermines Russia-centric view of the Soviet history
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Ukraine’s sick children are paying with their lives for our collective security in the west.
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Putin failed to take Kyiv, but he succeeded in rallying domestic support. Most in the West predicted the exact opposite.
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Pro-war friends in Russia continue to access banned social media — the transition was almost seamless. They have all the information in the world to become concerned about Putin. They choose not to.
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Why Tokayev’s brief remark in Kazakh in front of Putin became so sensational among Central Asians? Because we’ve been shamed, belittled and even threatened when speaking our indigenous languages in front of Russians. Often in our own lands and when we are a majority.
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The “great Russian victimhood” narrative and “the west is responsible” expands beyond belief.
Released prisoner Andrei Pivovarov (centre) believes that by inviting Russians to Europe on educational visas more of them will see that the West isn't an enemy. Highly questionable.
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Beautiful picture of sun drying apricots in Batken, Kyrgyzstan. Original post:
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*Every* country coming out of the Soviet system will to go through this. If it already did, great, it’s on a path of dropping the “post-Soviet” from its name. If it hasn’t yet, it *will* come. People will rise against the system of abuse, lies, and corruption. Sooner or later.3/3
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Yashin masterfully mixes white savior complex & his sense of victimhood to educate a clueless (to him) Ukrainian woman - who escaped war - by amplifying his virtue, while ignoring her trauma. Imagined or real, this convo speaks volumes. This is what the (ex)colonized deal with.
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Victimhood mentality, sense of entitlement, refusal to assume responsibility, and resistance to see Russia from the perspective of the currently and formerly colonized — even among educated and exiled intellectuals — continue as if it’s the delirious 1990s. 2/3
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Navalny should be freed, like many other Russian political prisoners. But the man holds racist views and did nothing to dismantle Russia’s imperial ideology.
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Wild how Russia can parade half-alive tortured suspects to a court room and call itself country fighting nazism
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“We understand that Russia is a big country but it does not account for over 82% of people or literature in Eastern Europe.”
What a fantastic piece
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Here we go: Russia Suspends Shipments of Kazakh Oil After Tokayev's Statements
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So, Russia IS invading Kazakhstan after all. At Kazakhstan’s invitation.
(Sorry for this hot take, send help)
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BBC Russian service: Latest data shows that most Russian soldiers dying in Ukraine are volunteers who joined the war on their own will, they are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.
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We see the depths of such self-centered thinking every time a Russian from Moscow is arrested or released by the West. 3/3
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Почему россияне прямо сейчас массово не выходят на улицы против войны?
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It’s going through its very own transformation right this moment — painfully breaking away from the lasting Soviet legacies to become a new country. What will it be? A new autocracy that values stagnation? Or a more open political system that embraces uncertainty? 2/
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Kazakhstan’s regime turned own mistakes over not hearing the grievances of their people into a geopolitical issue. Instead of choosing to remake a social contract at home they deepen ties with autocratic friends abroad — invite foreign military on its streets. Unprecedented.
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Kara-Murza, Yashin and Pivovarov are essentially saying: Russians are suffering from Putin and western sanctions, the west should help these victims, the victims are victims without any agency or responsibility over anything, somehow one day Russia will be free.
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Time to retire the question of whether Soviet Russia was a colonial power. It erased ethnic groups, cultures and languages. Starved and killed masses for submission. Russia continues to do that now in Ukraine. It was and is a colonizer with an imperial mindset.
I’ve seen a worrying trend here in that people think Russia wasn’t a colonizer or imperial power because it didn’t colonize Africa. This is a gross bastardization of Russian imperial history& perpetuates the erasure of internal colonization. Thread later.
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The west should platform more exiled leaders from non-ethnic Russian nations. Buryats, Bashkirs, Tuvans, and others suffer from Putin’s regime disproportionately more than Moscovites and share completely different visions of what Russia should be like in the future.
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Latest statements by Yashin, Navalnaya and Khodorkovsky show not only how ignorant they are of the plight of non-Russians, but also how shallow their reflexive thinking is despite new realities of the full-scar war. Superficial and dare I say it so dumb.
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Today, more Central Asians are asking themselves: Why do we continue to speak the language of a neighboring country that once occupied us, and not our native languages?
My piece on erasure of cultural memory & new identities in Central Asia
@Diplomat_APAC
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Why is prigozhin popular in Rostov? Because he killed more Ukrainians or because he attacked MOD?
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“The contrast provided by mass anti-government rallies over the past twelve months in other repressive dictatorships such as China and Iran has cast the silence of the Russian population in an even more unfavorable light.”
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Kara-Murza is talking as if it’s the 2000s and the West believes Russia can be a partner despite its rapid slide to autocracy. He talks as if there are no voices of non-Russians that don’t see their future in Russia. As if it’s up to the West, not Russians, to become “civilized”.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
@vkaramurza
: a peaceful Europe is only possible if post-Putin Russia is integrated into the EU
But I don’t think the EU has any appetite for it. Russian culture, as the war has shown, is very distinct from that of Europe 1/
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Good things happening in Central Asia in response to developments in Afghanistan:
- Uzb and Taj opening airports for transit of evacuees
- Kaz assisting neighbors in evacuating embassy staff
- Kaz allowing UN agencies to relocate to Almaty
- Taj readying for refugees
Cont.
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CSTO in Kazakhstan is the end of its independence. It’s an occupation, bloodless or not, imuch like Ukraine in 2014. Window of opportunity opens up in times political chaos.
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225 dead within days is A LOT. One of the bloodiest suppressions of protests the wider Eurasia. What a tragic time for Kazakhstan.
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Here’s a rough collection of books my students at Georgetown can read as part of Central Asia & South Caucasus class in addition to required academic texts. All but one are written by authors from the regions✨
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“Everyone could hear the torture, the screams, the shouts”, many residents disappeared, prisoners were forced to say “Hail Russia” and “Hail Putin”. Russians ran an especially large incarceration and torture campaign in Kherson
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When traveling around the world Varlamov felt comfortable shaming locals for what he saw as not fitting into his standards of civilized behavior. Yet here he is in London and can’t utter simple things about Russia’s war crimes.
залечь на дно в Лондоне и молчать о преступлениях путина и россии
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Navalnaya represents Moscow’s imperial attitudes towards the rest of Russia and calls it patriotism. Expected, still shocking how Ru oppo can be so ignorant to how Bashkirs, Tuvans, Kalmyks, Sakha and many other Indigenous nations see their future in Russia.
Yulia Navalnaya mocks ethnic minority independence movements, calling them “decolonizers” (pejorative) and saying that secession of any region from Russia would be “artificial division of a people with a common background and culture.”
Unsurprising but still messed up. 1/3
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Within the last 24-36 hours freed Ru oppo leaders managed to repeat key points made by Putin on how to end the war now and not disclose a single idea on how to counter Russian imperialism.
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This is a truly symbolic end of the post-Soviet capitalist era for Russia.
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Quite a journey for Kazakhstan between calling for CSTO troops in January to siding with the “Russian warship, go f yourself” sentiment
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There’s a lot we don’t know about why these students are doing this. Were they forced? Do they really support Z? But the fact it is happening in a crowded public space is ominous. Just a few days ago Z’ing was little more than Kremlin’s one produced video.
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Navalnaya prohibits critique of her late husband. The cult must continue, no right to oppose what he stood for. Russian opposition is as autocratic as the Kremlin.
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An honest take: there are more Russia studies hoping to see the goodness of the Russian society and almost nothing on apathy, cruelty, and imperial identity.
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Putin’s propaganda builds on seeing Russia as both victimized by the West and entitled to dominance over Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus. Both Russian state & elites view own rule over non-Russian populations not as colonialism but a gift of modernity.
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“мы в 1994-м пошли не в Европу, а в Среднюю Азию”
Navalny’s racism in full display, again
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Activists in the Global South, too, still see the Soviet Union as an anti-Western, anti-capitalist power. Many associate it with Marxism and communism. Such views ignore the fate of non-Russian nationalities who suffered mass starvation, purges, and genocide.
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It may come as a surprise to many, but if Russia collapses into smaller states it won’t be because of decolonial academic approaches.
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“One would think that Russia’s genocidal war, coupled with this planned cultural genocide, would be more than enough to move any western scholar of liberal & democratic persuasion to protest loudly at the top of their lungs. Nothing of this kind happened.”
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Mass protests against incumbent regimes — from Rose Revolution in Georgia to Kazakhstan today, with Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and many others in between — is a reaction to the lasting legacy of Soviet institutions created to protect the rulers against the rights of citizens.
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Non-Russians from Russia’s poorest regions make us the highest ratios of casualties in the war in Ukraine. Moscow —the lowest.
Source: Vyushkova, M., & Sherkhonov, E. (2023). Russia’s Ethnic Minority Casualties of the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine. Inner Asia, 25(1), 126-136.
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The battle of Avdiivka alone likely took more lives of Russian soldiers than the entire Soviet war in Afghanistan 🤯
So, Z-Russians on Telegram are now talking about their losses in the Battle of Avdiivka in 2023-2024.
Allegedly, it's 16,000 men as 'irreplaceable losses' (e.g., all fatalities + all severely wounded that will never be back to ranks again), as well as around 300 armored
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With the exception of Kasparov and maybe Kara-Murza, every Russian oppo leader and public intellectual fits this description.
An interesting take on Solzhenitsyn (which btw I agree with, basically).
@eugene_finkel
you’ll find this useful. The locator is in the right-hand side.
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The divide between western scholars and western diaspora scholars like Olga, myself, and others is we lived the Soviet reality and it took us decades to find the language to describe our experience. The war in Ukraine exposed more wounds and Russia’s undying imperial ambition.
I am puzzled by political scientists unwillingness to accept that maybe the surveys are not wrong & that maybe, in fact, Russians did rally around the flag & moved in their willingness to back the war once it started. 🧵1/3
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Let’s be clear Navalnaya’s message is: enough with so much focus on Ukraine, help me do what Navalny was doing instead. Sneaky, zero-sum, hateful.
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Second, it is not enough just to condemn the totalitarian legacies of the Tsarist, Soviet, and Putin regimes. The Russian state must also accept responsibility and repentance for historical atrocities in Russia and neighboring countries.
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Great piece by
@ymatusik
: “Russian exiles are having to rely on the hospitality of a Central Asian population that has greatly suffered from stigmatization, racism, and discrimination under the pejorative label of ‘migrants’ within Russian society.”
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Innocent civilians on both sides suffer as a result. The Kyrgyz-Tajik border is so militarized, any local tensions over water or land resources quickly turn into military confrontations. The OSCE, State Dep, and EU should broker and monitor ceasefire /End
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Doesn’t quite look like “win-win” development for the Global South, does it?
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Kyrgyzstan's leadership is weak and corrupt, in power since October 2020, led by pres Japarov and supported by GKNB head Tashiev. Both are in constant fear of mass protests and losing power. They don't need another challenge, especially from outside.
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Serious question: how can we be sure that the men russian security services captured and publicly tortured are the suspects? And not Putin’s theater for the masses?
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Several people noticed irregular mil activities in Kazakhstan. Expectedly rises suspicions if this is a clandestine support of the Russian invasion. Need clarity and transparency.
@IvarDale
Наши власти врут. Они тайно перебрасывают войска в Украину, чтобы воевать против нее на стороне путина 😡
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Noticing this small act of defiance from a state leader sends a message: speaking own language is important and safe. Hope more of this will happen going forward!
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You can support Ukraine and condemn Russian war crimes, support Israel and condemn its war crimes, support Gazans, condemn Hamaz, call out Putin’s hypocrisy, call out Western hypocrisy. See Russia as an empire and accept Israel’s right to exist. All can be true at the same time.x
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BUT nations formerly under Soviet occupation increasingly oppose Putin’s longing for Soviet order. From Ukraine to Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, decolonial discourse is rapidly expanding into the mainstream.
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📣CSTO troops will not solve Kazakhstan’s domestic grievances.📣
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Four patterns from around Central Asia that are now part of mainstream western fashion: ikat, suzani, shyrdak, and kurak. All have infinite different styles as well.
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@lisas_research
They do. But let’s admit it: these are small groups. Russians should be staging protests, reaching out to foreign governments, trying to change public opinion at home, and building big coalitions to stop the war. Completely reasonable expectation.
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Semi-hot take: Russians are fleeing, non-Russians are protesting
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Russian imperial liberals in one tweet: “we don’t owe anyone anything, especially the Ukrainians”
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@Sasha_Etkind
Would you post the picture of the victim on the cover if the book is about a rapist?
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“The absence of any official reaction among the Central Asian states on the Ukrainian intervention in Kursk should be considered another significant piece of evidence of Moscow’s declining authority in the region” by Otabek Akromov
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Japarov, on the other hand, made Putin wait at the SCO meeting. Previously Putin also mispronounced Japarov's name, his way of showing disrespect for Asian leaders.
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Navalny symbolizes bravery for Russians, not for Ukrainians, Chechens, Georgians, and others who continue to suffer from Russia’s imperial aggression.
So when talking about Russia’s future, consider the limitations of his politics for those who lost their lives resisting Russia.
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