“Shadow of the Empire”: Rethinking Russian Imperial Sovereignty in the Context of the War against Ukraine, 2022

Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions. The invasion was not only a shocking event, but also a process of geopolitical transformation. Russia, which has a long history of imperialism, in the 21st century is trying to break the established global world order and propose an alternative one. But the tools it uses are tools of violence, domination, blackmail, and intimidation. This is particularly important to explore in the context of the Russian leadership’s construction of imperial sovereignty, a form of political power used to expand and consolidate the empire’s influence in a particular geopolitical space: the post-Soviet space. This article aims to show the nature of Russian imperial sovereignty as well as the mechanisms of its dissemination, which are modus operandi – dynamic structures of reproduction of the system of power relations.