[PUTIN-TRUMP] Lavrov decoded—colonial discourse in its crudest form

"I want to emphasize once again: we have never said that we should simply seize certain territories. Neither Crimea, nor Donbass, nor Novorossiya, as territories, have ever been our goal. Our goal was to protect the people, the Russian people, who have lived on these lands for centuries, who discovered them, shed blood for them both in Crimea and in Donbass, created cities—Odessa, Nikolaev, and many others—ports, factories, plants."

This is what Lavrov said today.

This statement, like much of the official Russian discourse, cannot be understood without first understanding what “Russian” means to Russians like Lavrov and Putin.

In Lavrov's words, Russia's goal in this war is NOT territorial conquest, but the ‘protection’ of the “Russian people.” But what defines someone as Russian in this context? Not ethnicity. Not even language or religion. To be Russian, for a Russian imperialist nationalist wrapped in the red or monarchist flag, means to be loyal to the Russian state, to recognize its claim to historical greatness, its right to rule, and its moral superiority over competing political orders. For centuries, Russian state ideology has framed identity not as a matter of ethnicity, but of imperial loyalty.

In this worldview, Ukraine is not a foreign country. It is a rebellious province. A historical mistake. Worse, it is the symbol of the highest betrayal: an eastern Slavic, Orthodox land that rejected Moscow in favor of democratic self-determination.

Lavrov's statement makes perfect sense when decoded: “We are not looking for land. We are looking for obedience.”

That is why Putin insists that Ukraine is “anti-Russia.” He is 100% right. Ukraine is anti-Russia because it represents an alternative political project: a democratic, pluralistic, and de-imperialized project that rejects the Empire's right to define what freedom means for others. Ukraine's political identity was born out of opposition to submission to an autocratic imperial regime that would have placed the state and the monarch above the people. Being Ukrainian and being Russian is a conscious political choice, not an ethnicity one is born with.

Understanding Lavrov's statement means understanding the real goal of the war: not the conquest of territory, but the destruction of the Ukrainian state, society, culture, and political identity. From this perspective, every Ukrainian is a latent Russian kidnapped by Western propaganda, a confused soul to be saved by force. What Russia calls “the Russian people” are those it considers legitimate subjects of Moscow. The discourse on ‘protection’ is not humanitarian, it is colonial.

That is why there can be no Minsk III. No stable “compromise.” Because what Russia wants is not a piece of Ukraine, but the end of Ukraine.

Western politicians who see this as another ethnic conflict are fundamentally misunderstanding the war. Proposing that Ukraine cede territory in exchange for peace means offering a hostage to an empire that does not want territory, but wants total submission to its messianic global project. If you do not understand this logic, you cannot formulate a strategy to resist it.

The Russians do not hide their intentions; they say clearly what they want. The problem is that to understand them, one must understand the language they speak, not just the words, but the political and historical meanings behind them. Many Western governments, however, continue to project their own assumptions onto Russian statements.

This is a fundamental failure of communication. There is no shortage of experts: historians, political scientists, international relations specialists who speak the language, both literally and intellectually. But policymakers mostly ignore them. At this point, it is willful ignorance. And the cost of this ignorance is the loss of thousands of Ukrainian lives. It is disgusting. “The Russian people, who have lived on these lands for centuries, who discovered them (WHAT THE FUCK?), shed blood for them both in Crimea and in Donbass, created cities—Odessa, Nikolaev, and many others—ports, factories, plants.”

This is colonial discourse in its crudest form.

Lavrov speaks as if Russia arrived on a wasteland waiting to be “discovered” and civilized by a superior power. The claim that Russians ‘discovered’ the lands of Ukraine is not only historically absurd and meaningless, but it is a brutal act of “epistemic violence.”

The same voices that rightly denounce such “epistemic violence” and colonial narratives when they come from Europe or the US are completely silent when the same thing is said in Russian. Moreover, many of them present Russia as an anti-imperial or anti-colonial force. Idiots. Lavrov is not making a historical claim, he is justifying Russian imperial and colonial rule: “We came, we built, we bled, therefore it is ours.” It is the classic colonial narrative, resurrected in its most explicit 19th-century form.

And that is exactly what happens when imperial and colonial identity is left intact and unchallenged. It regenerates and then returns with missiles and nuclear weapons. It is an intellectual and moral failure of the so-called Russian “intelligentsia.” For decades, it has refused to confront the imperial foundations of its own society's identity. It has ignored the elephant in the room. And many still refuse to see it. The ideological foundations of this war were laid in books, classrooms, and the media long before the Russian army crossed the border. And those who built that structure, who contributed to it, are also responsible for this war.