ask this ww2 question and watch russian colonial truth come out.

How WWII still trigers russian empirial reflex.

There's one surest way to test every russian, no matter how anti-war they claim to be: ask them if russia 'liberated' anything in World War II.

You won't hear:

• How russians conspired with the Nazis to start the war;

• How the Kremlin carried out Hitler’s legacy by slaughtering and deporting millions in the ethnic cleansing during that war;

• How, while retreating, Moscow blew up entire Ukrainian and Belarusian neighbourhoods together with civilians, like Khreschatyk in Kyiv, detonated a dam in my Zaporizhzhia, killing tens of thousands in the following flood - with little justification, or mass-murdered tens of thousands of political prisoners, so nobody finds out about russian imperial crimes;

• How russian imperial generals hid behind Ukrainian and Belarusian backs, pushing Nazis back;

• How they committed endless war crimes without ever facing the consequences;

• How they replaced one mass-murdering occupation in Eastern Europe with another: killing, looting, and raping civilians;

• How the Kremlin branded as 'traitors' millions of colonised people who lived under Nazi occupation and used it as justification for further ethnic cleansing, slavery, and persecution for years to come.

You will hear, though:

• How russians, and only russians, liberated Europe from the Nazis and how everyone should be grateful forever.

For more on why russians are in such deep denial about russian colonialism, read about the 'Imperial Innocence' syndrome.

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Thanks to Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukrainian illustrator Mari Kinovych. Follow her work on Insta: @marikinoo

here is what's in store for you this week:

• russia keeps claiming it brought 'modernity' to former colonies. In fact, that was nothing but a system of economic exploitation to make Moscow wealthy.

• russia didn't run lots of colonies in Africa, not because it didn't try. It is because it was kicked out by Western colonialism.

• Why 'Asharshylyk' needs to become synonymous with russian colonial genocides;

• Several powerful personal stories about how russian colonialism deformed and shaped our indigenous identities.

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Russian Colonialism 101 is the first newsletter to shed light on Russian colonialism and is part of the Volya Hub network. What is happening to Ukraine has happened many times before, and the rest of the world has been conditioned to overlook or misdiagnose it. This isn’t history. It’s how you stop being shocked by what was always predictable.

“Because I believe we need to clearly name and call out colonial power structures when we see them. As you mentioned, the right language matters because it shapes our understanding of the world. I want to dig deep into the history of russian colonialism.”

by Livia Huber, a paying supporter of Russian Colonialism 101.

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