Amir Alecperov argues that Russian emigration after 2022 has not produced a break with imperial thinking – it has exported it. From Central Asia to the Baltic states and Germany, a troubling pattern emerges: Russians abroad carry the same mentality that enabled the war. Host states have the right, and the tools, to respond
Since February 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russians have left their country. The narrative surrounding this exodus is often sympathetic: these are people escaping Putin’s regime, war, and mobilisation. Some of them are. But the picture is considerably more complicated – and considerably darker.
Many of those who left did not break with the imperial worldview that enabled Russia’s war against Ukraine. Rather, they relocated it. These people believe that the lands and peoples around Russia exist for Russia’s benefit, and that Russian culture and presence carry a natural right to dominance wherever Russians settle.
This is not speculation. Kazakh observers and researchers have characterised ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan as having an 'imperial' mentality. They do not integrate, they refuse to learn the official language, and remain enclosed in Russian media space. These are not newly arrived war refugees. Many have lived in Kazakhstan for decades. The war simply made visible what was already there.
The post-2022 Russian diaspora has largely avoided serious self-reflection. The dominant posture is one of studied neutrality: I didn’t start the war, I just live here now. This position collapses under scrutiny.
Russian neoimperialism toward Kazakhstan – as toward Ukraine – rests on the belief that these states hardly deserve full sovereign equality with Russia. The logic predates Putin; it is structural, reproduced across generations. In 2023, a group in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, released a video declaring independence based on the 1937 Soviet constitution. These were not Kremlin agents parachuted in – they were locals whose political imagination remained entirely Soviet.
Russian neoimperialism towards Central Asian states rests on the belief that they hardly deserve full sovereign equality with Russia
As an Azerbaijani and a Tatar, I write this not from abstract concern but from lived proximity. The same political culture that erased Tatar language from schools in Kazan, Tatarstan, sent troops to Baku, Azerbaijan in January 1990, to crush the Azerbaijani people’s will for independence, now also tells Kazakhs that their country is, at best, a gift from Russia. These are not separate phenomena. They are the same empire at work.
Europe provides a starker version of the same picture. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been living with Russian-speaking minority communities for decades, many of whom arrived during Soviet occupation. The war has clarified certain uncomfortable truths about integration.
Polling conducted across 2022, 2023 and 2024 found that among Russian speakers in Latvia, only around 38% blamed Russia for the war in Ukraine – compared to over 80% of Latvian speakers. This is not a marginal gap. It represents a fundamental divergence in political reality between communities living side by side.
Latvia’s response has been measured but firm: it now requires Russian and Belarusian citizens renewing residency permits to pass a Latvian language exam at A2 level. Critics called this discriminatory. It is, in fact, a minimum standard of civic belonging many residents simply never bothered to meet.
Evidence from Russian speakers living in the Baltic states reveals uncomfortable truths about integration
In Germany, the picture is equally instructive. Research shows that support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is nearly twice as high among people with Russian roots as it is in the general German population. AfD calls for an end to sanctions against Russia and the repair of Nord Stream 2. One AfD MP boasted 'we are the party of choice for Russian Germans'. This is not conservative voting preference. This is political alignment with an aggressor state, expressed through the ballot box of a host country.
The connections run deeper than the ballot box. An iStories investigation revealed that AfD member Noah Krieger is in fact Chechen national Murad Dadaev, a pro-Russia plant promoting Kremlin narratives. Dadaev has ties to the European network of Ramzan Kadyrov, totalitarian leader of the Chechen Republic.
The legal framework for responding to this phenomenon already exists. Under Article 10 (2) of the European Convention on Human Rights, freedom of expression may be restricted where necessary in a democratic society for a purpose of national security, public safety, or the protection of the rights of others. The European Court of Human Rights has held consistently that expressions inciting hatred or promoting intolerance can be restricted proportionately.
Democracy is not required to be passive toward those who use its freedoms to undermine it
Romania’s post-1989 experience is instructive. The country banned the promotion of totalitarian ideologies and communist symbols – not as censorship, but as democratic self-defence. Restrictions are proportionate and judicially supervised. The principle translates: a Russian citizen living in Riga or Berlin who publicly glorifies the invasion of Ukraine is not exercising protected political speech. They are promoting a doctrine that denies their neighbours’ sovereignty and humanity.
This is the concept of militant democracy – streitbare Demokratie – in German constitutional tradition. Democracy is not required to be passive toward those who use its freedoms to undermine it.
Host states are not powerless. They have a toolkit: language requirements for residency, monitoring of public expressions of support for aggression, deportation where conduct crosses into incitement. None of this requires creating new laws – only applying existing standards consistently.
The selective silence of international institutions is its own problem. The same European bodies that promote linguistic diversity within the EU have largely ignored Russian communities using European residency as a waiting room for the war to end in Russia’s favour.
For peoples like Tatars, Azerbaijanis, and Kazakhs – historically positioned as the perpetual former subjects of empire – there is nothing abstract about this. War in Ukraine is not an anomaly. It is the continuation of a centuries-long project of erasure, carried now not only by tanks but by the quieter conviction of those who packed their bags in 2022 and simply brought the empire with them.
Democratic states welcomed them. They owe those states something in return. So far, many have declined to pay.
