In this episode of La Loupe, Xavier Yvon analyzes the mosaic of peoples that make up the Russian Federation with Charlotte Lalanne, journalist for the World service of L’Express, and Léo Vidal-Giraud, former correspondent in Moscow.
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The team: Xavier Yvon (presentation and writing), Ambre Rosala (editing), Jules Krot (directing) and Marion Galard (work-study).
Credits: France 2, BFM TV
Music and dressing: Emmanuel Herschon/Studio Torrent
Picture credits: Sergei Chirikov/AFP
Logo: Anne-Laure Chapelain/Benjamin Chazal
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Xavier Yvon: In recent days, you have certainly learned the names of Russian cities that you did not know: those that line the Rostov – Moscow highway, following the progress of Wagner’s mercenaries on the maps published in the media.
It’s been like this since the beginning of the war in Ukraine: you deepen your knowledge of Russia almost every day. You are probably able to summarize the biography of Yevgeny Prigojine, that of Vladimir Putin, to explain the relationship that binds the Russian president to the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, “oligarchs” and “siloviki” are part of your vocabulary… But I don’t I’m not sure the following terms mean much to you:
Buriatia, Komis, Oudmurtia, Adygea, Mordovia, Bashkortostan or even Nenetsia.
These names are those of republics or provinces that form the Russian Federation. The largest country in the world is a mosaic of more or less autonomous territories, inhabited by a hundred different peoples.
The invasion of Ukraine has reinforced discontent in some of these regions, it has awakened desires for independence. Activists from these ethnic minorities even speak of a necessary “decolonization” in Russia.
Will the war of conquest launched by Vladimir Putin end up causing the break-up of his country? That’s the question we’re looking at today.
For further
Russia: what could post-Putin look like?
Russia: the dream of emancipation of ethnic minorities
Alexander Etkind: “Russia is an empire in decline that will eventually collapse”
War in Ukraine: Ramzan Kadyrov, or the bravado of “General Tiktok”