Russia Future Watch – II. Decolonization for Security: Ukraine’s Strategic Policy Toward Indigenous Peoples Colonized by Russia

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Decolonization for Security: Ukraine’s Strategic Policy Toward Indigenous Peoples Colonized by Russia, by Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Deputy Chair, Temporary Special Commission on the Development of State Policy Toward the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Federation, Ukrainian Parliament, is the second article in a series of analyses as part of “Promethean Liberation: Russia’s Emerging National and Regional Movements,” a new project from Jamestown Senior Fellow Janusz Bugajski.

Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine has revealed that the Russian Federation is not a true federation but an empire sustained by repression, colonization, and the systemic denial of national self-determination.

Dozens of native peoples representing indigenous nations with their own languages, history, culture, and political background and aspirations live within Russia. Their identities and rights have been comprehensively suppressed.

These nations are not Russians. They are Tatars, Chechens, Circassians, Ingush, Buryats, Kalmyks, and many others. Their fight for self-identification is not new, and today it intersects with Ukraine’s own existential struggle.

In response to this long-term challenge, in 2023, the Ukrainian parliament established the Temporary Special Commission on the Development of State Policy Toward the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Federation (TSC).

The commission’s mission is to develop the legal, political, and international strategy for Ukraine to collaborate with national liberation movements within the Russian Federation and to establish these partnerships as a cornerstone of Ukraine’s long-term security and foreign policy.

The Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked the beginning of the largest war in Europe since World War II. It was also a turning point in how the international community perceived the nature of the Russian state. No longer could Russia be viewed as merely a geopolitical adversary, but as a modern form of empire that was built on centuries of colonial expansion, violent assimilation, and the suppression of indigenous peoples.