Challenging Moscow’s control over its population

Challenging Moscow’s control over its population.

The struggles of ethno-nationalist movements in the Russian Federation’s ethnic republics to achieve political sovereignty have involved severe human suffering across multiple generations, with trauma transmitted over time. The Federation’s FSB has met each ethno-national or ideological challenge to Moscow’s control with overwhelming force, including extreme violence and psychologically terrorising forms of warfare designed to suppress rejection of imperial domination. In turn, state violence has repeatedly provoked violent responses, which have also harmed other civilian populations within the federation. The Chechen, Karelian, Kalmyk, and other so-called captive republics stand at the forefront of these long-running struggles over survival, subjugation, and annihilation. The scale of suffering endured by North Caucasus peoples in their conflicts with Moscow suggests deep damage to their historical psychological narratives, leaving national identity vulnerable to permanent fracture and forced diaspora.

In Chechnya, although Grozny has been rebuilt, the damaged psychological identity of an embattled people remains visible across the auls and stanitsas of the mountain landscape, which are marked by the graves of former inhabitants (Jagielski 2004). The federation’s first and second invasions of Chechnya left deeply traumatised men and women, some of whom continue to fight their earlier battles in present-day conflicts in Ukraine, Transnistria, and South Ossetia, seeking in the present what they could not achieve in the past. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has altered the calculations of many ethno-nationalist movements and contributed to the creation of the “Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum” (FNRF or FSNR), established by wealthy industrialists from Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine, Georgia, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, with support from armed ethno-nationalist opposition movements staffed by refugee diasporas and backed by several European governments. The forum advocates the release of Moscow’s republics, krais, okrugs, and autonomous oblasts containing ethnic communities conquered by the Romanov Empire before the Soviet state and forcibly incorporated after the Russian Revolution. Its participants and supporters envisage the break-up of the Russian Federation into independent successor states and have attracted support from national and regional elites in an unknown number of United Nations member states, urging assistance in establishing provisional governments-in-exile.

Initially dismissed by political scientists, the forum has since held eleven meetings in Warsaw and Gdańsk, Helsingborg, the European Parliament in Brussels, the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia City Hall, London, Paris, and the parliaments of Japan, Germany, and Lithuania. Moscow has reacted quickly after each forum—especially when hosted by national governments—branding the FNRF an “undesirable organisation” and a threat to national security. The FSB has threatened every speaker with criminal investigation, alleging treason in the case of federation nationals and espionage or hostile political activity in the case of non-citizens. The federation’s Foreign Ministry has stated that “the [FNRF] activities pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation,” and that its leaders “call for the violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and promote separatist nationalist slogans.”

In early August 2023, the Russian Foreign Ministry lodged a formal protest with the Japanese Embassy over a Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia meeting held in Tokyo, alleging that it promoted separatist ideology. Moscow treated support for the forum as interference in Russia’s internal affairs. In a note published on the ministry’s website, it warned that such practices, which it said could “completely destroy the remnants of normal relations dismantled by the Japanese government,” must cease immediately, and that “Japanese apologists of terrorist ideas must suffer well-deserved punishment.” The ministry further warned that, if such a “provocation” were repeated, Tokyo should expect “the most sensitive” retaliatory steps from the Kremlin.

The FNRF’s efforts are reinforced by the Ukrainian government, which is resisting Russia’s latest attempt to annex neighbouring territory and suppress internal challenges to its control. Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence Agency (GUR) has organised eight international-legion units separate from the Ministry of Defence’s legion of Western volunteers. These UKRGUR legions were built largely around pre-existing armed opposition movements contesting Moscow’s control over ethnic republics in Siberia, Karelia, Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, and elsewhere. Although the UKRGUR’s role remains shrouded in secrecy, it appears to enjoy support from allies in Europe and North America. Regardless of whether the FNRF can successfully incite rebellion in the federation’s captive republics, Moscow’s fear of renewed unrest across its vast territories is evident in its threats and reactions, including suggestions of extrajudicial retaliation against forum members abroad.

As Moscow’s confrontational actions and rhetoric toward its European neighbours continue, support for the dissolution of its empire is growing, and the Kremlin’s fears appear to be growing with it. Given Moscow’s history of conflict with both its republics and neighbouring states, the federation’s leadership cannot afford to ignore the threat of rebellion, particularly when it has been unable to subdue a much smaller and weaker neighbour, Ukraine. The next sections examine how Moscow seeks to control its population and resources in ways that create or intensify the psychophysiological and behavioural conditions.