Few on the American left would dispute that the U.S. is an imperialist power. But some will not support popular struggles for social and national liberation against oppressive states that are not the U.S or in its camp of allies. These “campists” take sides between imperialist camps instead of being consistently anti-imperialist against all imperialist powers.
When it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the campists will claim that Russia is not an imperialist power, that Russia was justified in invading because it was only defending itself against NATO expansion and Ukraine seeking NATO’s protection. That is like saying a woman who was raped was “asking for it,” an analogy that the Danish journalist Michael Andersen draws out in commenting on Trump’s recent statement telling Ukraine that Russia’s invasion “was not a war to go into.” [1]
One would think that Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territories, with the stated goals of “denazification,” a euphemism for regime change, and “demilitarization,” to make Ukraine defenseless against Russia, is obviously an imperialist war to recolonize Ukraine. But it is not obvious to the campists. As we hit the third anniversary of Russia’s full scale invasion, it seems an appropriate time to remind the campists of Russia’s past and present record of imperialism.
Putin has initiated wars of territorial expansion in Chechnya and Georgia as well as Ukraine. He has directed Russian military intervention for economic and geopolitical gain in Central Asia, Syria, and many African nations.
Putin is the proud heir to the imperialist tradition of Great Russian chauvinism that Lenin criticized in supporting the right of nations to self-determination, and specifically including Ukraine. Putin bizarrely blamed Lenin for inventing the nation of Ukraine in his February 21, 2022 speech to explain his pending invasion of Ukraine. “Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be rightfully called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.’ He was its creator and architect,” Putin pontificated. [2]
Russia is an empire that has been acquiring lands since the 1500s, conquering nations and indigenous peoples to the west, south, and east of Moscow, from Ukraine to many peoples in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Far East. This empire building was conducted during the same period as European powers were colonizing peoples overseas in the Global South. It was the same period in which American settler colonialism, like Russian settler colonialism, was expanding across its own continent to assert dominion over the lands of indigenous peoples. Many of the dominated nations and peoples swallowed up by the Russian Empire today want independence or a truly federalized Russian Federation that gives them substantial autonomy and self-rule.
The Russian Empire got into the colonial scramble for Africa late, trying but failing to get Sudan and Ethiopia in the last years of the 19th century. It had the same white supremacist attitudes as its neighboring European countries to its west. In an article on this subject, an historian of imperial Russia, Oleksandr Polianichev, writes:
Remember, you are white, a man of the superior race,’ this was one of the rules Lieutenant Grigorii Chertkov espoused while deployed in Africa in the service of the Russian Empire in 1897. He was part of a delegation sent by Russian Emperor Nicholas II to Ethiopia to establish a formal Russian diplomatic mission with the aim of bringing the African country into the Russian imperial fold….
While the Russian Empire failed in Africa, it enjoyed remarkable success in expanding and maintaining its dominion in Eurasia, where its imperial troops imposed brutal rule on various nations and established infrastructure for the extraction of resources.
Throughout Asia, Russia pursued the same mission to ‘civilise the natives’ that its Western allies and rivals did elsewhere in the world, sharing with them the same ‘white man’s burden’. Contrary to the Kremlin’s bold anti-colonial assertions today, Russia was part and parcel of global European imperialism. [3]
Today, now as a post-Soviet hyper-capitalist country, Russia under Putin’s helm has the same imperialist expansionary compulsions as any capitalist country. Let’s review its colonial and neocolonial expansionism in recent years.
Russian military forces have occupied the four southern Kiril Islands of Japan since 1945. The United Nations does not recognize the independence or Russian sovereignty over any of these territories.
When the Soviet Union broke apart, many nations within the Russian Empire declared their independence. Russia has fought to keep many of them within the Russian Federation.
In 1992, after Moldova declared its independence and was accepted into the United Nations, Russian troops invaded and still occupy Transnistria within Moldova, which is 12% of Moldova’s land area.
In 2000, after Chechnya had declared independence in 1991 and initially won its war of independence against Russia in 1996, Russia again invaded in 2000 and won its war to recolonize Chechnya, defeating the Chechens by flattening the capital city of Grozny with carpet bombing. That was the first of several wars started by Putin.
In 2008, Russian troops invaded and have since occupied the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which account for 20% of Georgia’s territory.
In 2014, Russian forces invaded and occupied parts of Ukraine, including Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
In 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and now occupies about 20% of Ukrainian territory in its ongoing war to recolonize Ukraine.
Russia today also has many overseas neocolonies which it exploits for economic gain and geostrategic military positioning.
Russia has foreign military bases in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Madagascar, Libya, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, and Sudan.
Russia serves as a gendarme for oil and gas corporations in foreign countries. Wagner Group mercenaries were employed by the government of Mozambique in 2019 to protect the oil and gas projects of ExxonMobil and Total in the northern Cabo Delgado region from Islamist insurgents, but withdrew due to heavy casualties after a few months.
Russia’s intervention in Kazakhstan in 2022 was successful. Russia dispatched thousands of Russian special forces to Kazakhstan who gunned down hundreds of protesters in pro-democracy demonstrations that started with oil workers in the Tengizchevroil project jointly owned by Chevron (50%), ExxonMobil (25%), the Kazakhstan state-owned oil and gas company KazMunayGas (20%), and Russia’s Lukoil (5%). The Kazakh rebellion objected to the economic austerity and authoritarian rule of the Kazakhstan government. [4]
Russia had 83 military bases in Syria until the collapse of the Assad regime last December. Russia has now moved its troops and equipment from those Syrian bases to bases in Libya and Mali for its Expeditionary Corps and Africa Corps [5] and to Russia for the war on Ukraine. Before the collapse of Assad, Russian oligarchs took advantage of Assad’s dependence on Russian military protection to acquire or build businesses in the natural resources, public utilities, and real estate sectors, including newly privatized beach front property. [6] The fate of Russia’s businesses in Syria and its major air and naval base are now up for negotiation with the new Syria government in formation.
In Armenia, Russian troops had been stationed in the ethnic Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan since a 1994 peace deal between Nagorno-Karabakh (or the Republic of Artsakh as the Armenians seeking independence called it) and Azerbaijan. The Russian troops were stationed there as peacekeepers, which the Russians did fairly well despite flare ups between Armenians and Azeribaijanis with ethnic cleansings by both sides. But in 2023, the Azerbaijanis invaded Nagorno-Karabakh with overwhelming forces and defeated the Armenians while 2,000 Russian troops stood by. Almost all ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, over 100,000 people, fled the pogroms of the Azerbaijani occupiers. The land had been occupied by ethnic Armenians since the second century BC. The Russians did nothing because they were bogged down in Ukraine and because Armenia has stopped participating in Russia’s military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization. But Russia plans to keep, and Armenia accepts, that the Russian military base in Gyumri, Armenia will remain until at least 2044 in accordance with a 1995 agreement between the two countries.
In Africa [7], Russia has employed the Wagner Group, the private military company led by Yevgeny Prigozhin until his ill-fated rebellion against Putin. The Wagner Group operations have been incorporated into the Russian military as the Africa Corps [8], which intervenes in civil wars and props up African dictatorships. Many consider these African dictatorships to be states captured by the Russians. In any case, these states pay for Russian protection by granting land for military bases and concessions to mine gold and other minerals and to export timber.
Russia’s gold mining concessions in Africa generated $2.5 billion in revenue for the Russian military in the first year and half of its war on Ukraine. [5] The repression by the Wagner Group/Africa Corps has been brutal, including bloody massacres and mass rape. The Wagner Group/Africa Corps is also active in propaganda and election influence operations like Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency was. [9]
In Libya, Russia forces support the insurgent Libyan National Army forces in the east and south against the UN-recognized National Accord government in Tripoli. [10] The Russian air and naval bases have become even more important for Russia’s military interventions and economic exploitation in African countries since the long-term status its Syrian air and naval bases is now in question.
In Sudan, Russian forces supported the Rapid Support Force (RSF) in its repression of the democratic revolution of 2018-2019 when it was allied with the Sudanese army. Now it plays both sides of the devastating civil war between RSF and the Sudanese army, getting gold mining concessions in the Darfur region from the RSF and from the Sudanese army other gold mines and the promise of a naval base on the Red Sea. [11]
In the Central African Republic, Russian forces serve as a Praetorian guard to prop up the authoritarian rule of President Touadéra in exchange for gold mining and timber concessions. [12]
In Burkino Faso, Niger, and Mali, Russia’s Africa Corps is also providing security for the military juntas that recently took power in coups in these countries. They have committed a number of atrocities against civilians in the war against Islamist insurgents and against workers at mining sites. Russian forces are getting more gold and other metal mining concessions in this gold belt across the Sahel. [13]
The facts presented here are in no way intended to excuse or deflect from American imperialism. They are presented to document that the U.S. is not the only imperialist power and that Russia is an imperialist power, too. We should oppose imperialism by any state and support any nation’s people resisting imperial domination, from the Palestinians to the Ukrainians.
- Michael Andersen, “Trump making Putin happy (part 2): Ukraine – the rape parallel,” Two Grumpy Old Men on Ukraine, February 13, 2025, https://twogrumpyoldmenonukraine.substack.com/p/trump-making-putin-happy-part-2-ukraine
- Vladimir Putin, “Address by the President of the Russian Federation,” The Kremlin, Moscow, February 21, 2022, http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67828.
- Oleksandr Polianichev, “How Russia tried to colonise Africa and failed,” Aljazeera, May 24, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/5/24/how-russia-tried-to-colonise-africa-and-failed.
- Abdujalil Abdurasulov, “Kazakhstan unrest: ‘If you protest again, we’ll kill you’,” BBC, January 20, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60058972.
- Russia incorporated the Wagner Group into its armed forces after it defeated the rebellion led by the owner of the Wagner private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin. These forces are now called the Wagner Group, the Expeditionary Corps, or the Africa Corps depending on the country.
- Ali Noureddine, “Russia’s Incursion into Syria’s Economy: A Multi-Purpose Monopoly,” Fanack, November 9, 2022, https://fanack.com/economy/features-insights/russias-incursion-into-syrias-economy-a-multi-purpose-monopoly~242839/.
- Nigerian journallist Philip Obajli Jr. has done the most reporting on the Wagner Group/Africa Corps: https://muckrack.com/philip-obaji-jr/articles.
- Eromo Egbejule, “More control, less deniability: what next for Russia in Africa after Wagner?” The Guardian, May 21, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/what-next-for-russia-in-africa-after-wagner-moscow-influence.
- Jessica Berlin et al., “The Blood Gold Report: How the Kremlin is using Wagner to launder billions in African gold,” December 2023, https://bloodgoldreport.com.
- Simon Speakman Cordall, “Under new general, Russia’s Wagner makes deeper inroads into Libya,” Aljazeera, February 25, 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/25/under-new-general-russias-wagner-makes-deeper-inroads-into-libya.
- Oscar Rickett and Mohammed Amin, “Sudan war: Russia hedges bets by aiding both sides in conflict,” Middle East Eye, May 6, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/russia-sudan-war-saf-rsf-hedges-bets-both-sides-support.
- Bohumil Doboš and Alexander Purton, “Proxy Neo-colonialism? The Case of Wagner Group in the Central African Republic,” Insight on Africa, November 26, 2023, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09750878231209705.
- Julia Stanyard, “Mercenaries and Illicit Markets: Russia’s Africa Corpsa and the Business of Conflict,” Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, February 2025, https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Julia-Stanyard-Mercenaries-and-illicit-markets-Russias-Africa-Corps-and-the-business-of-conflict-GI-TOC-February-2025.pdf.
