Moscow’s Russian Nationalism Alienating Non-Russians and the Kremlin has Reason to Worry, ‘Nezygar’ Telegram Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 – Moscow’s increasingly Russian nationalist messaging since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine is alienating non-Russians and many regionalist groups, and the Kremlin has reason to worry given that it has acted on the assumption that the war would unify the country, the Nezygar telegram channel says.

            But that has not happened, the oppositionist outlet says. Instead, “separatist sentiments in Russian regions have become a source of serious concern for the Kremlin and the security forces” given that “internal sociological surveys show these sentiments haven’t disappeared in their hidden form but instead have intensified” (tgstat.ru/channel/@russicaRU/66512 discussed by Baku commentator at minval.az/news/124512191).

            According to Nezygar, “closed studies record increases in alarming sentiments in the non-Russian republics” where residents increasingly interpret war deaths from there “not as abstract losses but as threats to the very existence of their peoples, perceptions fueled by alternative narratives” which “continue to circulate despite censorship.”

            But the Kremlin recognizes that “the key risks to itself are not so much related to any grassroots protests as to intra-elite dynamics,” where contradictions among groups like state corporations, business clans, and political centers are increasing, a trend that “creates the preconditions for centrifugal processes.”

            What that means, the telegram channel continues, is that Russia is not entering any “repetition of ‘the parade of sovereignties’ of the 1990s,” but a period in which “regional elites increasingly will use the theme of autonomy as a bargaining tool,” even though Moscow shows little willingness to change its centralist approach.

            “But as socio-economic problems [of the country] intensify,” Nezygar argues, “the demand for increased regional powers will grow – both from local elites and from the population; and in the non-Russian republics, this demand is extremely likely to take the form of separatist sentiments.”

            One of the reasons for that is Moscow’s “ideological shift toward Russian national patriotism,” the telegram channel says. The notion of a civic Russian identity “has been effectively replaced” by a more ethnic Russian-centered nationalism which the non-Russians are expected to accept.

            However, “for national minorities, this rhetoric appears exclusionary and reinforces a sense of alienation. No attempt is being made to find a balance between ethnic diversity and the dominant national narrative, which in the medium term only increases the risks of destabilization” – and that means the growth of separatism is “the most likely scenario.”