Kremlin Narratives Preclude Not only Calling War in Ukraine a War but Conflicts among Nationalities Conflicts, Abramenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – It is universally recognized that Putin propagandists insist that no one must call Russia’s war in Ukraine a war; but it is less widely understood that there are other issues where these same propagandists insist that other things must not be called by their own names, Olga Abramenko says.

            According to the Russian commentator, one of the most significant of these concerns the relationships between the dominant Russian ethnos and the non-Russian minorities which the Kremlin insists must never be referred to as “conflicts” (svoboda.org/a/pryamoy-uscherb-oljga-abramenko-o-sledah-kolonizatsii/33745160.html).

            That not only distorts reality but makes it far more difficult for those involved to talk about what is going on  and then address the problems that this verbal sleight of hand seeks to conceal, Abramenko says; and it is one of the first things that representatives of the non-Russian nations must fight to overcome.

            One of the places where this conflict has been most in evidence is at the UN’s Permanent Forum on the Issues of Indigenous Peoples, which has just held its 25^th annual session. There, representatives of Russian officialdom continue to deny there are any conflicts, while representatives of the non-Russian minorities argue just the reverse.

            The officials typically get more attention, but the minority representatives have the far better argument because their position not only is congruent with reality but also with the way in which most participants in these forums discuss issues concerning the relationship between dominant groups and minorities.

            According to Abramenko, “for those peoples who now live in the Russian Federation, there are several aspects of conflicts in the sense in which it is understood at the UN. There is the war of Russia against Ukraine which has disproportionately involved the indigenous peoples, the continuing impact of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire, the USSR, and present-day Russia and the thieving activities of extraction companies.”

            In addition, she says, peoples in the Russian Federation “who do not belong to the ethnic Russian majority experience racism and xenophobia which in recent decades has become a part of social life and, in the  assessments of experts, is growing; and the numerically small peoples … remain one of the most vulnerable and impoverished groups in the population.”

            This year’s meeting of the UN forum focused on health issues in particular. Representatives of the Russian government argued that any problems the minorities were experiencing in that sphere were the result of Ukrainian actions and those of other outside powers rather than the Russian state or Russian society.

            But non-Russian experts pointed to the consequences of Russian actions and insisted they were not directed solely at activists, as many outsiders assume, but at the non-Russian peoples as a whole. Abramenko offers as an example a recent statement by Eskender Bariyev of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center who makes that point (adcmemorial.org/statyi/vystupleniya-uchastnikov-diskussii-golosa-korennyh-narodov-protiv-repressij-so-storony-rossijskih-vlastej/ ).