Imperial Innocence as Identity and Method: The Sacrificial Cult and Colonialism in the Russian Federation

The article sets current colonial war narratives in historical perspective. It argues that one should understand Russia's insistence on cultural unity with Ukrainians through the lens of settler colonialism. In contrast to overseas extractive colonial regimes, which based their rule on highlighting difference with the colonized, settler colonialism works through politics of assimilation and elimination of cultural difference. Settler colonial regimes work through denial of its coloniality, which in Russian case developed into societal and official identity of "imperial innocence" and victimhood.