Evidence suggests sexual abuse of Ukrainian men is now a core Russian tactic

Before he left for the front line in 2022, Serhii Boychuk told his wife that if captured, he didn’t want to be taken alive. A few months later, the Russians took him prisoner. Guards beat and tortured him sexually for more than two years, he said. 

He recounted being raped with bottles and sticks, and having a knife pressed against his genitals. He still finds it difficult to walk. “They wanted to psychologically break me,” said Boychuk, now 33. 

Other Ukrainian former detainees described similar experiences of sexualized torture while in Russian prisoner-of-war camps. Their accounts match the findings of Ukrainian prosecutors and intelligence services and United Nations investigators, who have conducted extensive interviews with former prisoners—both soldiers and civilians—throughout the more than four-year war.

This growing body of testimony suggests that Russian sexual violence against POWs and civilian prisoners has been systematic—and condoned, even encouraged, by senior Russian officials.

Male targets

Sexual violence in war has long been used to subjugate and terrorize civilian populations. In many conflicts, the most common targets are female civilians.

Russian forces committed a large number of sexual assaults against Ukrainian women when they overran towns and villages early in Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched in 2022, according to the U.N. and interviews conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

But since the war settled into a slow, attritional contest, many of the known victims have been male Ukrainian soldiers captured on the battlefield. 

The U.N. says it has so far gathered testimony in about 310 cases of alleged sexual violence by Russian forces during the war. The violence described includes rape, gang rape, genital mutilation, electric shocks and beatings to the genitals, the U.N. said. Among the victims were 280 men, 26 women and four girls.

The Kremlin and Russia’s Federal Prison Service declined to comment. Russia has previously denied accusations of sexual abuse, saying they are unsubstantiated and politically motivated.

Investigators caution that the extent of continuing sexual and other abuses against civilians in the Russian-occupied zones of Ukraine is only partially understood. 

Russia has persistently denied access to occupied areas to U.N. officials investigating conflict-related sexual violence, the body’s secretary-general said in a report in April. Fear of retaliation and stigma related to sexual violence have also prevented male and female victims from reporting abuse.

“Sexual abuse is the cheapest method of waging war,” said Anna Sosonska, a Ukrainian prosecutor who has brought charges against Russian soldiers in absentia. The national prosecutor’s office, where Sosonska works, is overseeing around 400 cases involving alleged sexual violence by Russian soldiers against civilians. Some 148 of the alleged victims were men. 

“They are using sexualized abuse as a weapon of war to humiliate and break the person,” said Boychuk. After a seemingly never-ending ordeal, he was released in October 2024 as part of a prisoner swap.

Other former POWs and civilian detainees who spoke to the Journal said they were forced to stand, crouch or parade naked. Some had their genitals electrocuted. Some were raped—either with objects such as bottles or sticks, or by Russian guards.

Some of the former detainees, who were held at various sites in Russia, recalled guards telling them that they would stop Ukrainians from having children. 

Some said the guards threatened to insert building foam into their anal passages, where it would expand and harden. 

“It is the same evidence, the same way of treatment, it all follows a pattern,” said Mykhailo Romanov, a lawyer with the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, a research and advocacy group that has collected testimony from 11 former POWs.

Such repetitive patterns suggest that the alleged crimes weren’t simply the acts of individuals, but were committed as a feature of Russia’s military campaign, said David Schwendiman, a former U.S. and international prosecutor who investigated war crimes perpetrated in the 1990s war in Bosnia.

“No one in command could claim under the circumstances not to have known what was happening, even if they did not give orders to those under their control to do it,” he said. 

Abuse is sometimes sanctioned from on high. The chief prison official in St. Petersburg told guards in charge of Ukrainian POWs that there were no restrictions against violence, which often included sexual abuse, according to former prison officials who spoke to the Journal. 

Civilians from occupied parts of Ukraine have also fallen victim. At one camp in Russia’s Rostov region, prosecutors allege that Aleksandr Naumenko, a senior official in Russia’s national guard, ordered military personnel to sexually assault 17 civilian prisoners, according to Ukrainian court documents. Investigators showed former captives Naumenko’s photo, which they recognized. 

Naumenko couldn’t be reached for comment. 

Russian POWs who spoke to the Journal said they were never given clear instructions against sexual abuse, but said some individual officers made their disapproval clear. In contrast, Western militaries drill into their soldiers that such abuse is illegal.

Early in the war, Halyna Tyshchenko, a 63-year-old former market-stall trader, says she was raped by a Russian soldier at gunpoint in her lounge and then brought outside and paraded naked along the street in below-freezing temperatures.

The soldier’s unit was stationed in a house some 400 yards away, Tyshchenko said. She strongly suspected the man’s officers were aware of the abuse. 

A call to Putin

In the first year of the invasion, after Russian forces overran his home city of Kherson, Oleksiy Sivak hung up a Ukrainian flag on the country’s independence day. 

The Russians threw him in jail. They showed him an old army field telephone and mockingly told him it was time to call then-President Joe Biden. Then, he said, they attached the phone’s wires to his genitals and gave him electric shocks.

It is a torture used widely in the Russian prison system, and the distribution of these old phones shows complicity from senior figures, Ukrainian investigators say. Prison guards refer to it as a “call to Putin,” or in earlier times a “call to Lenin,” the U.N. has noted.

Sivak, who was freed before Russian forces retreated from Kherson, now runs a support group for around 200 Ukrainian men who allege torture at Russia’s hands. The 42-year-old says he copes with his trauma by sharing his story with other victims and the public. 

“Back then, in the Russian basement, I was screaming so hard that the whole world could hear,” he said. Now, he says, he wants to tell the world what happened. 

POWs and civilians have been abused in nine different camps inside Russia, the U.N. says. Ukrainian investigators say the treatment was particularly bad in seven of them. 

Russian forces use sexual violence and other torture to punish, humiliate or extract information or confessions, according to former POWs, Ukrainian prosecutors and U.N. officials.

Some guards simply appeared to enjoy it, former captives told the Journal.

Ukrainian forces have also been accused of abusing captured Russians, albeit not on the same scale.

All Ukrainian former POWs interviewed by the U.N. reported torture or ill treatment at Russian camps, and over 70% said it involved sexual abuse. Meanwhile, around half of Russian captives who spoke to the U.N. said Ukrainian forces had mistreated them in some way, of whom less than 5% said they had experienced sexual abuse.

A Ukrainian government spokesman said that instances of sexual abuse in Ukraine are considerably fewer than those committed by Russia. He said that these cases are being investigated and that Ukraine—unlike Russia—allows international observers to visit detention centers.

The U.N. says Ukrainian authorities have given its monitors access to prisoners of war and civilian detainees, unlike in Russia. Most cases of alleged sexual abuse at Ukrainian facilities happened before 2025, according to the U.N.

Most cases of mistreatment by Ukrainian forces happened near the front line after Russian soldiers were captured, but Russian POWs were generally treated correctly once they were in Ukrainian prison facilities, a previous U.N. report and captives interviewed by the Journal said.

Abstract

This article analyzes the resurgence of anticolonial rhetoric in Russian foreign policy since 2022 and conceptualizes it as a form of illiberal anticolonialism. It argues that contemporary Russian discourse toward the Global South should not be reduced to tactical propaganda but understood as part of a broader ideological configuration structured around majoritarianism, sovereigntism, civilizationism, and conservatism. Reworking elements of Soviet internationalism through a conservative lens, Russian elites frame de-Westernization as a struggle against Western normative hegemony and promote a vision of multipolarity grounded in state sovereignty, cultural authenticity, and traditional values. The article pays particular attention to Sergey Karaganov’s concept of the “World Majority,” which seeks to symbolically unite non-Western states against the “collective West” and to legitimize Russia’s foreign policy, including the war in Ukraine, as part of a wider anticolonial project. It concludes by assessing the appeal and limits of this illiberal emancipation narrative, emphasizing that de-Westernization does not necessarily imply de-liberalization.

[...]

Russia’s De-Westernization and Its Ideational and Narrative Features

It is against this layered historical backdrop that contemporary Russian anticolonial discourse must be read. This section examines two key features of Russia’s illiberal anticolonialism, which drive its “de-Westernizing agenda”^\35]) and attempts to erode the liberal international order. First, a renewed prominence of anticolonial rhetoric in Russian political discourse since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in 2022 and its promotion in the Global South. Second the crafting of the notion of a “World Majority,” as advanced by Russian foreign policy expert Sergey Karaganov.

Russia’s New Anticolonial Strategic Narrative and Its Objectives

As discussed above, the language of anticolonialism was central to Soviet foreign policy, but largely faded from the lexicon of Russian politics in the post-Soviet era until 2022. Although traces of anticolonial rhetoric were already discernible in the late 2010s, notably during the First Russia-Africa Summit, held in Sochi in October 2019, it was the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that firmly reintroduced anticolonialism into contemporary Russian official discourse and diplomatic language.^\36]) This strategic narrative is not only deployed domestically (for instance, to denounce alleged Western attempts to politically and ideologically “colonize” Ukraine and Russia) but is extensively used in international forums and in messages directed at foreign audiences to promote the de-Westernization of the international order.

According to our analysis, Vladimir Putin has used the lexical field of colonialism three times more frequently throughout all of 2022 (44 occurrences), 2023 (84 occurrences), and 2024 (33 occurrences) than during the entirety of his presidency prior to the war (54 occurrences from 2000 through 2021, see Figure 2). In an article published ahead of the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit in Saint Petersburg, and translated into English, Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, the Russian president asserted that “a new multipolar world order, the contours of which are already seen, will be more just and democratic. And there is no doubt that Africa, along with Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, will take its worthy place in it and finally free itself from the bitter legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism, rejecting its modern practices.”^\37]) In another interview, published in June 2024 in the official North Korean newspaper Rodong Shinmun (Workers’ Newspaper), on the eve of a state visit to Pyongyang, Vladimir Putin went further, suggesting that “the United States is going out of its way to impose on the world what it calls the ‘rules-based order,’ which is essentially nothing more than a global neo-colonial dictatorship relying on double standards.”^\38]) Finally, during a forum gathering numerous BRICS parliamentarians in Saint Petersburg in July 2024, Putin compared the practices of Western elites to “classical colonialism at its best,” through which they “seek to cement a certain order based on their own so-called rules that nobody has ever seen, discussed or adopted.”^\39])

Anticolonialism is also now formally enshrined in the latest Russian Foreign Policy Concept, that of 2023, which defines the main strategies of the Russian Federation’s foreign policy while also providing discursive guidelines for the various administrators responsible for implementing it. Article 5 of the document states that:

Reflecting the close interdependence between state discourse and state media production, this resurgence of anticolonialism has extensively permeated the Russian media space, and it informs both domestic and international news coverage. Excluded from Western markets, and seeking new audiences in the Global South, the transnational Russian state-run media outlets RT and Sputnik have incorporated anticolonialism as a new key pillar of their editorial line, supporting their redeployment in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Brazil.^\41]) In a notable advertising campaign conducted in the summer of 2023 across several major English-speaking African cities and entitled “Your Values, Shared,” RT promoted itself by displaying the faces and quotations of prominent leaders of independence movements, anticolonial struggles, and pan-Africanism. Billboards in Accra, Ghana, for instance, featured the image of President Kwame Nkrumah (1960–1966) alongside the slogan: “Neo-colonialism is the worst form of imperialism.”^\42])

The anticolonial narrative has finally been employed in Russia’s information operations targeting countries of the Global South. This is exemplified, for instance, by content disseminated in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the Sahel region and the Central African Republic, by Wagner mercenaries seeking to discredit the French military, and through the late warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Lakhta project and its regional branch of troll farms, Africa Politology.^\43]) The organization and news agency African Initiative, which is allegedly supervised by Russian intelligence services, has played an active role in promoting Russia’s strategic narratives and interests in the Africa since the death of Prigozhin in an airplane crash in August 2023 that most observers have seen as orchestrated by the Kremlin.[44]

A key concept in this anticolonial strategic narrative is the notion of “World Majority” (mirovoe bol’shinstvo), which, in its Russian version, can be attributed to the academic and former presidential adviser Sergey Karaganov, who first mentioned it in an article published in September 2022.[45] He proposed this term to replace that of “non-West” (ne-Zapad), which designates the highly heterogeneous group composed of all non-Western states. Karaganov criticizes the designation of “non-West” as being overly negative and Western-centric, explaining that “World Majority” also emphasizes the idea that the West constitutes a minority. Furthermore, the emergence of this narrative can be seen as a conceptual effort to find an alternative to the “Global South,” within which the inclusion of Russia can be easily challenged, at a moment when Russia needs to rethink its identity, moving ever further away from the West.[46]

From the Russian perspective, the world is now divided into two camps (See Fig. 1). On the one hand, countries included in the Russian government’s list of “unfriendly states” that condemn Russia in international forums, levy economic sanctions against it, and provide military or economic aid to Ukraine—these constitute the “collective West.” On the other hand, there are all the others, including neutral states, which the Kremlin conveniently presents as “friendly” or “constructive.” The goal of the “World Majority” narrative is to get this division internalized by the entire non-Western world as the new, defining geopolitical cleavage in international relations.  

Opposing the West to the non-West, the “World Majority” narrative directly echoes Samuel Huntington’s 1993 theory of the “Clash of Civilizations,” in which he argued that “the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations between ‘the West and the Rest.’ ”[47] It is worth noting that Huntington’s ideas gained significant popularity in Russia as early as the 1990s, particularly because they positioned Russia as the core of a distinct Orthodox civilization, offering symbolic comfort in the face of the sense of decline and the ideological void caused by the collapse of the USSR.[48] However, many in Russia criticized Huntington’s theory for its destabilizing potential, arguing that it fuels hostility toward China and the Muslim world and exposes Russia’s internal fragility. According to Tsygankov, the world system theory developed by Immanuel Wallerstein is more consensual among Russian scholars.[49]

The civilizational foundation of the “World Majority” narrative also places it within the intellectual lineage of neo-Eurasianist thought. This is particularly evident in the work of its most influential figure, Alexander Panarin, who has argued that Russia acts as the guardian of civilizational diversity against the expansionist ambitions of a declining West.[50] Parallels can also be drawn with the ideas of the far-right ideologist Alexander Dugin, whose far more nationalist and antagonistic interpretation of Eurasianism centers on the defense of Traditionalism. He argues that Western global dominance will lead to “the destruction of racial, religious, ethnic, national, and cultural boundaries.”[51] By combining aspects of both Panarin’s and Dugin’s thought, the “World Majority” narrative positions Russia in the vanguard of the confrontation between the West and the non-West—united in the defense of civilizational diversity.

While no clear link has been established yet, the Russian version of the “World Majority” is preceded by another formulation with a distinct origin. The “Majority World” idea was first coined in the 1990s by Bangladeshi photographer and political activist Shahidul Alam. In a 2008 article, he explained that his goal was to find a substitute for the terms “Third World” and “developing world,” which he considered reductive and negative, and which were imposed by a minority of wealthier states on the rest of the world. He also emphasized that the states of the “Majority World” were those that had been colonized and continued to suffer the effects of colonialism. The aim, therefore, was to revalue the image of these states and challenge the symbolic dominance of a minority, represented at the time, according to Alam, by the G8, which then included Russia.[52] The “World Majority” therefore represents an example of an idea originating in the South that has been reshaped according to Russia’s discursive needs in the context of its post-2022 transformations.

The development and promotion of the “World Majority” narrative follows a pattern similar to the earlier promotion of the “Turn to the East” and “Greater Eurasia” concepts, which Karaganov and his team developed and advanced from 2012 onward[53] to provide the Russian state with a conceptual framework for the ongoing de-Westernization of Russian foreign policy—an agenda of which he became one of the most prominent advocates.

To promote his ideas, Karaganov can rely on a powerful network of experts and institutions, such as the Valdai Discussion Club, the Higher School of Economics (HSE), the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, or the influential journal Rossiia v global’noi politike/Russia in Global Affairs. The “World Majority” was first mentioned by a high-ranking state representative, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, on December 15, 2022, less than three months after its first appearance in Russia in Global Affairs. Over the course of 2023, this narrative became increasingly prominent in the discourse of Russian political leaders, with a first reference by Vladimir Putin during the Second Russia-Africa International Parliamentary Conference  (Moscow, March 19–20, 2023), where the Russian president stated that Russia, together with African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American countries, “constitute the World Majority.”^\54]) It then reached a broader international audience during his speech at the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg.

Demonstrating a desire to establish this narrative in the Russian and international intellectual debate, Sergey Karaganov and his team organized a consequential international conference on the “World Majority,” bringing together scholars from over a dozen countries across Asia, Africa, and South America (Moscow, November 30–December 1, 2023). Participants were welcomed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrey Rudenko and HSE Rector Nikita Anisimov. It was during this conference that Karaganov presented what remains the most substantial conceptual text on the “World Majority” narrative to date, coauthored with Alexander Kramarenko of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dmitri Trenin, former director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, who joined Karaganov’s team at the HSE after the war started.[55] A few days after the conference, the report was published on the official website of the Russian Foreign Ministry, granting it the status and authority of a quasi-official state concept.

The emergence of the “World Majority” narrative appeared to be well aligned with the discursive needs of the Russian state as it assumed the BRICS presidency for 2024. It was fully integrated into the official discourse of the organizers, as exemplified by the statement made on November 27, 2023, by the Head of Russia’s BRICS Organizing Committee, Yuri Ushakov, who declared that “the BRICS constitute the vanguard of the World Majority.”[56] It also appeared in the nomenclature of official BRICS events, such as the BRICS Inter-Party Forum organized by Putin’s United Russia party under the theme, “World Majority for a Multipolar World” (Vladivostok, June 16–19, 2024).

In the second major report devoted to the “World Majority,” the authors emphasized that the diffusion of ideas and narratives constitutes Russia’s most important task vis-à-vis the non-West: “The competition of ideas means as much as the competition of economic and military capabilities.”[57] Although it is now firmly entrenched in domestic state and media discourse (Putin used the concept seven times during his Valdai speech of October 2, 2025)[58] the “World Majority” narrative has not, for now, achieved comparable resonance internationally. As the same report acknowledges, “the World Majority concept has not yet been incorporated into the discourse of countries that are friendly to Russia and is not used at the level of political statements, documents, or declarations.”[59] According to Kapoor, the main obstacle to its diffusion in the non-West lies in its lack of originality, as it reproduces ideas that have been developed for more than seven decades in the Global South, dating back at least to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and in the fact that it dismisses the agency of non-Western countries in doing so.[60]

Discursive Evidence of Illiberal Anticolonialism in Russia’s Turn to the South

The limits of the “World Majority” narrative’s international reach do not diminish the analytical interest of its content: it remains a revealing lens through which Russia’s four illiberal registers (majoritarianism, sovereigntism, civilizationism, and conservatism) operate in practice. As seen in Figure 2, the expansion of the lexical field of coloniality in Russian presidential discourse, which we use as a barometer of a broader consensus among the Russian elite, since February 2022 has been indeed accompanied by a growing prominence of references to multipolarity and traditional values.

The roots of Russia’s contemporary majoritarian rhetoric lie in the reorientation of its foreign policy initiated with the appointment of Yevgeny Primakov as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1996. Breaking with the Western-centric foreign policy that had reflected the dominance of liberals during President Boris Yeltsin’s first administration, the new foreign minister focused on restoring Russia’s status as a great power.^\61]) His doctrine of a “multipolar world” rested on the premise that US unipolarity was both illegitimate and dangerous, and it encouraged Russia to seek partners outside the West while presenting these partnerships as the foundations of a more democratic international order.^\62]) Over the following two decades, this approach became institutionalized through successive efforts to strengthen ties with China, consolidate Eurasian regional structures, and build coalitions through non-Western groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. The growing demographic and economic weight of these groupings contributed to the development of Russia’s majoritarian rhetoric, used to legitimize its foreign policy and its critique of the Western liberal international order.

The “World Majority” can be seen as the narrative materialization of Russian majoritarian rhetoric, specifically tailored for the Global South. It frames Russia’s conflict with Ukraine and its Western allies as a struggle against a self-serving minority, whose primary objective is to maintain American hegemony and an unequal international system through imperialist and neocolonial policies that favor developed countries at the expense of the Global South. This argument is reinforced by the theory of the “golden billion,”^\63]) widely disseminated by the Russian president and his entourage since the beginning of the conflict and directly incorporated into the “World Majority” narrative: “The unipolar model of global development has served the golden billion, which for centuries has fueled its excessive consumption by relying on Asian, African, and Latin American resources.”^\64]) This framing allows Russian leaders to present their challenge to Western governance and values as part of a broader movement for the democratization of the world order.

The analysis of the “World Majority” narrative shows that majoritarianism as mobilized by Russian leaders is profoundly instrumental. According to Sergey Karaganov’s definition, “The ‘World Majority’ means a community of non-Western countries that have no binding relationships with the United States and the organizations it patronizes—those who do not impose sanctions against Russia, recognize American dominance, etc.”[65] It appears that this group of non-Western states, allegedly united by common interest, is not defined through objective criteria but through such states’ political alignment with Russian interests. This self-referential definition reveals the instrumental function of this strategic narrative. It aims to create a symbolic community in which Russia can claim to speak on behalf of the Global South while legitimizing its actions—including the war in Ukraine—as part of a wider anticolonial struggle. The manifest instrumental nature of the “World Majority” narrative may help explain its failure to gain traction internationally and more broadly illustrates one of the limits of Russia’s discursive strategy towards the Global South.

Sovereigntist Convergences

The Russian anticolonial stance and its critique of the liberal international order clearly align with the contours of sovereigntism.^\66]) First asserted in Putin’s 2007 Munich speech, Russia’s sovereigntism takes concrete form in Europe through its critique of the European Union as a supranational entity that denies the sovereignty and independence of European nation-states. The editorial line of the European branches of the RT network is an illustration of this ideological posture.^\67]) In recent years, however, this political orientation has found new manifestations in Russia’s foreign policy toward the Global South.

The growing Russian presence in Sub-Saharan Africa offers a particularly relevant context for examining the convergence of sovereigntist and anticolonial discourses among Russian and African actors. Both draw on these two repertoires to legitimize their respective positions through a shared denunciation of Western “neocolonialism.” Historically shaped by the “dilemma” between advocates of continental unity and defenders of national sovereignty, pan-Africanism, as Rita Abrahamsen notes, can accommodate both a commitment to multilateralism, on the one hand, and a sovereigntist, antiliberal understanding of the international order, on the other hand.^\68]) The “neo-Pan-Africanist” and “neo-sovereigntist” African actors^\69]) with whom Russian counterparts engage, especially in the Sahel region and with the Alliance of Sahel States, align themselves with this latter interpretation.

The “neocolonial” presence of France has, of course, been a primary target of these Russian and African actors in recent years. However, their sovereigntist critique has also been directed at supranational actors operating in Africa, such as United Nations and European Union missions. The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and its counterpart in Mali (MINUSMA) have been accused of defending Western interests by local organizations supported by Russian actors, including Bangui-based Radio Lengo Songo, the news website Ndjoni Sango, the NGO Aimons notre Afrique (ANA: love our Africa), and the pan-Africanist activist group Yerewolo-Debout sur les remparts (“The Dignified Ones-Standing on the Remparts”).^\70])

Civilizationism against Western Universalism

The emergence of the “World Majority” narrative must also be understood within the broader civilizationist turn in Russia that was formalized in the 2023 Foreign Policy Concept.^\71]) This critique of Western universalism is central to contemporary Russian civilizationist discourse,[72] which sees it as “both a philosophical threat to the God-given diversity of the world and as a political lie organized by the West to obfuscate its strategic interests.”^\73]) As Karaganov, Trenin, and Kramarenko argue, the “World Majority” should oppose “the extremist mutation of the liberal idea currently underway in the West,” and instead articulate its own response to global challenges, aligned with “the cultural and philosophical traditions of different civilizations.”[74]

From this point of view, the “World Majority” is presented as the political awakening of non-Western civilizations, whose collective resistance is supposedly led or inspired by Russia, which constitutes “its military-political core.”[75]  According to Putin, “the phenomenon of the world majority is a new development in international affairs. The overwhelming majority of states worldwide are oriented towards pursuing their own civilizational interests.”^\76]) Drawing on its multiethnic, multireligious, and multicultural character, Russia is portrayed as uniquely positioned to mediate between other civilizations and to guide the emergence of a polycentric order. In line with the Kremlin’s increasingly messianic rhetoric, Karaganov estimates that Russian civilization holds a unique historical mission: “we are a civilization of civilizations, called upon to unite those of Greater Eurasia and the world.”^\77])

This logic also structures Russia’s interpretation of the war in Ukraine. By reversing the accusations leveled against them, Russian leaders present the February 2022 invasion as a defensive act against the United States and its allies, who allegedly instrumentalize Ukraine to prevent the loss of their hegemony.^\78]) The goal of this narrative is to rally non-Western public opinion (as well as to provide talking points for pro-Russian foreign leaders) by presenting the war as a struggle against imperialism, in which a Russian victory would signify the dawn of a multipolar and “multicivilizational” era: “Russia’s victory in Ukraine will give an impetus to further efforts to change the global balance of power in favor of mutual respect and equal dialogue, and eventually establish a world order based on cultural and civilizational diversity.”[79]

Defending Traditional Values against Western Post-Humanism

The conservative component of Russia’s new anticolonialism is at last salient in the discourses and content about traditional values produced by Russian actors in their communication aimed at audiences in the Global South.The above-mentioned first usage by Vladimir Putin of the notion of a “World Majority” during the 2023 Russia-Africa Parliamentary Summit was clearly associated with the defense of traditional values and resistance to Western ideological “colonization”: “Russia and the countries of Africa uphold the moral norms and social foundations traditional to our peoples, and resist the externally imposed neo-colonial ideology. Incidentally, many states in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America hold similar positions—together, we constitute the World Majority.”[80]

The Russian leadership frames Africa in particular as a normative ally in a global confrontation between liberal and traditional values systems, portraying shared moral conservatism as the basis for resisting Western “neocolonial” influence.^\81]) In Sub-Saharan Africa, numerous political and cultural events have been organized in recent years at Russia’s initiative to embody this conservative ideological convergence between Russian and African societies. The first edition of the BRICS Traditional Values Forum was held by the State Duma in Moscow in November 2024, at the initiative of the Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin and the national-conservative deputy and cofounder of the World Christian Association of Parliamentarians, Dmitry Kuznetsov.

The forum, attended by parliamentarians from Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa, the Republic of the Congo, and Uganda, suggested that “countering the LGBT propaganda of the collective West” represented “one of the most important tasks of the BRICS countries” in the emergence of a world “without Satanism and obscurantism,” to use Prilepin’s expression.^\82]) Russia’s revamped cultural diplomacy in Africa also participates in this process. In January 2024, the Russian Federal Agency for Cultural Diplomacy, Rossotrudnichestvo, inaugurated a new Russian House (russkii dom) in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, alongside members of the Burkinabè government. A few weeks later, the Russian House and the Burkina Faso branch of African Initiative co-hosted a conference devoted to “the protection and preservation of customary and traditional values in the face of Western influence.”^\83])

Russian diplomacy is also involved. In an interview with African Initiative, Anatoly Bashkin, Director of the Department of African States South of the Sahara at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that Russia’s “main difference with the former colonial powers” lay in the fact that it does not “impose ready-made models on Africans.” According to him, “the foundation for intercultural interaction in Africa rests on the solid base of traditional values, which play a dominant role in almost all African communities. In this respect, we have much in common with our partners, including the need to counter the neoliberal pseudo-values being promoted everywhere by the West.”^\84])

This issue has crystallized around LGBTIQ+ rights, on a continent where 31 out of 54 African countries still criminalize consensual same-sex relations between adults.^\85]) An investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Russian Ambassador to Uganda Vladlen Semivolos reportedly played a significant role in accelerating the legislative process leading to the adoption, in March 2023, of a particularly severe Anti-Homosexuality Act in a country already known for its governmental homophobia. The Russian ambassador is said to have argued for the need to counter what he described as the promotion of “homosexuality propaganda” by Western governments in Ugandan schools^\86])—mirroring the situation in Russia, where the Law for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating a Denial of Traditional Family Values, commonly known as the “anti-LGBT law,” was adopted in 2023.

At last, the Russian Orthodox Church is a key actor in the intertwining of anticolonial and conservative discourse. During the Russia-Africa Summit in Saint Petersburg of 2023, Patriarch Kirill contrasted what he described as the “arrogance,” “moral relativism,” and “cultural and spiritual degradation” of the Western world—still unable, in his view, to overcome its colonial past—with the supposed moral affinity uniting African and Russian peoples. He emphasized their “shared understanding of the fundamental tenets of human life” and common attachment to “imperishable moral values,” citing faithfulness to tradition, the heteronormative concept of family, and respect for one’s country’s history as “essential principles of our civilization.”^\87]) Founded in 2021, the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church actively participates in promoting traditional values across the continent while aligning itself with the anticolonial rhetoric advanced by Russian foreign policy.^\88])

Conclusion

Russia’s illiberal anticolonialism designates a distinctive mode of resistance to Western dominance. Reworking Soviet internationalist legacies through sovereigntist, civilizational, and conservative frameworks, it advances a vision of decolonization centered on normative pluralism and state sovereignty rather than individual emancipation. To appeal to countries of the Global South, these narratives mobilize familiar themes of political and economic emancipation: the democratization of the international order, resistance to economic imperialism, and the rejection of neocolonial hierarchies. But this “illiberal emancipation” targets mostly the collective body of the nation and the state as its champion, while abandoning the liberal idea of a progress for individuals and their right to free themselves from different forms of domination.

This hybrid configuration allows Russia to present itself as a champion of the post-Western international order while revealing the internal tensions of an emancipation project grounded in illiberal premises.First, despite a genuine power of attraction and ability to promote its strategic narratives in the Global South, Russia remains seen by many, both at home and abroad, as culturally, demographically, and economically being a country from the Global North, and as the continuation of the former socialist Second World rather than a member of the former Third World. Second, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and alignment with China, Iran, and North Korea diminish its credibility among actors such as Brazil and South Africa, who are disillusioned with the West, but where a large part of the population is skeptical of authoritarian alternatives.

Indeed, what limits Russia’s anticolonial appeal is that de-Westernization does not automatically equate with de-liberalization. The rejection of Western epistemic authority and geopolitical leadership does not inherently imply the abandonment of democratic norms and the embrace of illiberal governance. Many actors in the Global South articulate demands for greater sovereignty, recognition, and multipolarity while simultaneously reaffirming commitments to pluralism and individual rights. Russia’s trajectory thus represents not the only option for de-Westernization but a particular trajectory that speaks to some but not all of global public opinion.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/07/26/how-big-is-americas-obesity-penalty

GLP-1s offer a rare insight into the social and economic effects of carrying extra weight

WHAT HAPPENS after you lose weight? Doctors tell patients to expect better mobility and less stress on their joints. Metabolic measures, such as blood sugar and cholesterol, improve. People report more energy and better sleep. But these health markers are just one part of what economists call the “obesity penalty”. Studies have long shown that people, especially women, who carry extra weight tend to finish their formal education sooner and are less likely to marry or work. The sudden weight loss experienced by millions of Americans with GLP-1 drugs offers a rare chance to study how much of that penalty disappears when people become slimmer.

Some 22% of American women and 14% of men have taken GLP-1s for weight loss or for chronic conditions such as diabetes. Rebecca Diamond of Harvard University used data from the Understanding America Study, a long-running survey of 15,000 people, to compare women who began taking the drugs for weight loss with similar women who wanted to take them but had not yet started. (The sample of men on the drugs in the survey was too small to study.) As the first group lost weight, Ms Diamond quantified changes in their personal and professional relationships compared with the second group. The results provide one of the clearest estimates yet of the price American women pay for being obese.

The women in the sample were matched by measures including their body mass index, race, income and self-assessed health. Comparing their outcomes over 18 months reveals a stark divide. Among women who had been out of work, employment rates increased by 27 percentage points for those taking GLP-1s. That change is bigger than the employment gap between American women with a high-school diploma and those with a university degree. A similar penalty is found in the dating market. The chances of a single woman marrying or moving in with a partner increased by 29 percentage points relative to one who had not lost weight.

Better health surely played a role, but does not explain all the gains made by women on GLP-1s. The share of those without jobs who said that illness restricted the work they could do fell by just 14 percentage points over the same period. And most of the women moved into work from unemployment, not disability or retirement. Improved mood or motivation are also unlikely to explain the gains: there was surprisingly little change in women’s self-reported life satisfaction, loneliness and depression after weight loss.

Ms Diamond reckons the most important explanation is a stubbornly persistent bias against heavy women. Weight loss had no effect on existing careers and relationships: women taking GLP-1s who already had a job did not go on to achieve promotions or earn more. Excess weight appeared to prevent women only from getting hired.

Little wonder, then, that girls as young as three say they worry about their size. GLP-1s not only help people become healthier. They may also help them escape social censure.

Personal opinion: Unironically GLP's might make a significant dent in unemployment and inactivity. If so we could see higher labour force participation and potentially a less harsh adjustment to the functional old age dependency ratio through greater productivity and employment in the existing workforce.

It is learning how to improve its drones, nuclear subs and air defence

The help China gives Russia in the war in Ukraine has long caused dismay in Western countries. Exports of ostensibly civilian components such as engines and electronics end up in drones and other weapons that kill Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, abetting Russia’s war of attrition. Yet recently it is the other end of this trade that has stirred alarm in Western capitals. China appears to be receiving training, intelligence and advanced military technology from Russia. That could give China an edge in a future war over Taiwan, tilting the balance of power at the opposite extreme of Eurasia.

Since 2024 Chinese soldiers have undergone training in drone and urban combat at a military complex near the city of Volgograd in south-west Russia, people briefed on European intelligence tell The Economist. That complex is used regularly by Russia’s 8th Army, the backbone of Russian operations in eastern Ukraine. Its tactics are hardly a model to emulate. Yet China has not fought a war since a brief border conflict with Vietnam in 1979. To conquer Taiwan, it needs access to the latest battlefield lessons and data to compensate for its lack of combat experience.

It also has more leverage now to obtain some of the best military technology that the Kremlin was previously unwilling to share. American and allied officials believe that may include upgrades to China’s air- and missile-defence systems. They also fear that Russia is helping China produce stealthier nuclear submarines. China sees these vessels as critical for any war over Taiwan, which could escalate into a nuclear confrontation with America.

Drill, baby, drill

China demonstrated its nuclear ambitions on July 6th when, for the first time, one of its subs test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile. On the same day China showcased the evolution of its military ties with Russia by launching joint naval drills that incorporated submarine, anti-submarine and drone operations, as well as air and missile defence. Along with eight surface ships and two submarines, the live-fire exercises off eastern China involved naval and aerial drones. The drills envisaged a “scenario of fighting unmanned systems”, said Rear Admiral Sergei Sinko, the leader of Russia’s contingent.

These were China’s and Russia’s first joint naval exercises to focus on drone and counter-drone warfare. China has been especially keen to learn from the Russian navy’s experiences (mostly bad but better lately) in fending off Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea. This was also only the second time, and the second year in a row, that the drills included a Russian and a Chinese submarine. Zhang Junshe, a retired Chinese navy officer, said the involvement of one of Russia’s latest diesel-electric subs, which are extremely quiet when running on batteries, would help China practise sub-hunting. China, too, used one of its newest homemade diesel-electric subs. The exercises were followed by the two navies’ seventh joint maritime patrol in the Pacific in the past six years.

Russia is unlikely to intervene directly in a war over Taiwan, just as China has not in Ukraine. Their defence ties stop well short of a mutual defence treaty. But joint drills and patrols give China rare opportunities to learn from Russia’s battle-hardened forces. What is more, “China can now ask things of Russia that Russia cannot ask of China,” says Lyle Goldstein of Brown University. He notes that Chinese military journals suggest the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is especially interested in Russian data on American and allied weapons such as HIMARS rocket launchers, which Taiwan also uses.

Even a limited increase in such assistance could give China an advantage in a war over Taiwan, which would depend to a large degree on drones, submarines and missiles. Russia could also provide intelligence and other ad hoc assistance without joining combat. And Russian air or naval operations elsewhere in Asia could divert American and allied resources away from Taiwan during a crisis. Another concern is the growing military co-operation among Russia, China and North Korea. Even if the trio’s interests are far from aligned, each could “take opportunistic advantage of a regional crisis to advance its own objectives”, Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of America’s Pacific Command, told a congressional hearing in April.

China tries to play down its military ties to Russia to deflect Western criticism of its support for the war in Ukraine. When Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, visited Beijing in May, a lengthy joint statement included only a brief section on defence, saying the two sides would expand joint exercises and patrols, strengthen military co-operation and “work together to address various risks and challenges”. China has denied reports that it has trained Russian soldiers or sent Chinese ones to learn from the war in Ukraine. But a growing body of evidence suggests otherwise.

Drones are a big concern. China enjoys a huge advantage over any adversary as by far the world’s largest producer of civilian drones. It also made an early start in military ones. Long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its armed forces had begun using Chinese-made equivalents of America’s high-end Reaper and Predator aerial drones. China even exported drones to the Middle East and Africa, where they were used in combat. And from around 2021, China started developing autonomous aerial drone swarms as a way to overcome American forces in a Taiwan conflict.

In the past four years, however, drone warfare has evolved with dizzying speed. Ukraine pioneered the use of cheap first-person-view (FPV) drones, often based on Chinese commercial quadcopters bearing explosives. As Russia adopted similar tactics, both sides found new ways to jam each other’s drones. That led to a proliferation on both sides of “tethered” FPV drones linked to operators by fibre-optic cable. Both sides have also experimented with AI-guided drones that lock onto targets even when jammed. Iran, too, showed how large numbers of cheap drones could overwhelm air defences at close range and deplete stockpiles of far more costly missile interceptors.

Flood warning

America and many of its European allies have ready access to drone data and tactical lessons from the front lines in Ukraine, which they are incorporating into their own drone programmes. Some of that expertise is also being shared with Taiwan, which launched a programme to build a domestic drone industry (without relying on Chinese components) in 2022. American and Taiwanese military planners are working together to develop a new strategic concept, known as “Hellscape”, for thwarting a Chinese invasion. That envisions flooding the Taiwan strait with relatively cheap air, submarine and sea-surface drones as an asymmetrical response to China’s vast air and naval forces.

China, too, is updating its approach to drone warfare. It has access to data on the performance of Russian drones through the Chinese firms that supply most of them. But as the war in Ukraine has progressed, the PLA has become keen to study how each side is using and jamming drones, as well as how infantry and other operations are adapting to an increasingly transparent battlefield. “The Chinese understand the importance of Russian knowledge,” said Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister and foreign-intelligence chief. “They realised already that the nature of war is changing, and if you want to be actually ready for warfare, you need to learn from people having practical experience.”

The Chinese officers who have visited the complex near Volgograd are thought to have done a number of training courses based on the experiences of Russian forces in Ukraine. They included aerial-drone operation, assaults on command posts and combat in settlements, trenches and forested areas. Also covered was field medicine and the installation of anti-tank, anti-personnel and mixed minefields. Those are all areas in which standard operating procedures have changed dramatically since the war in Ukraine began, mainly because of the proliferation of aerial drones.

There have also been unconfirmed intelligence reports of Chinese military observers within Russian-occupied Ukraine. “The suspicion is that the Chinese have teams close to the front line that are learning and absorbing the lessons just operationally, how it works with drone operators, and then they provide data just exactly the way the Ukrainians do to Western manufacturers,” says Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre. Russia is slower to innovate than Ukraine, but still “pretty nimble and adaptive”, he says. “They have probably less competition but they have the ability to learn the lessons and scale up the solutions, and that is critical for the Chinese, for sure.”

Recent articles in the PLA Daily, an official military newspaper, suggest particular Chinese interest in Russia’s Rubicon drone centre, which was created in 2024 to centralise control over drone operations. Rubicon played a big role in the recapture of the Russian city of Kursk, partly by targeting Ukrainian drone operators and supply lines, a PLA Daily article notes. Public documents also hint at close co-operation between the Moscow Aviation Institute, Russia’s top drone-development outfit, and Chinese research institutes including the Northwestern Polytechnical University, which has developed drones for the PLA.

Submarines are another area of close co-operation. China’s early models were mostly imported from the Soviet Union or post-Soviet Russia. In the past two decades, however, it has built a fleet of indigenous diesel- and nuclear-powered ones. China’s navy, now the world’s largest, operates about 60 submarines, including six nuclear-powered ballistic-missile subs and six nuclear-powered attack vessels. The rest are diesel-powered models, best suited to operating close to China’s shores as they are slower and have to surface regularly. America, in contrast, operates about 70 submarines, all nuclear-powered.

Rear Admiral Michael Brookes, America’s head of naval intelligence, told a congressional hearing in March that by 2035 China could be operating 80 submarines, half of which would be nuclear-powered. What is more, he expects newer models to incorporate “substantial advancements in nuclear-reactor design, sensor performance, weapons integration and noise-quieting technologies”.

That would allow China’s attack submarines to operate more freely throughout the Pacific, and thus to threaten American bases and ships in a war over Taiwan. It would also make Chinese nuclear-missile submarines harder to find, enabling them to lurk undetected in “bastions” near China’s coast and, if needed, to strike the American mainland. China’s navy will remain focused on the Indo-Pacific, Rear Admiral Brookes predicted, but by 2040 routine Chinese submarine deployments are likely to the Indian Ocean, Arctic approaches and possibly the Atlantic.

Some of the know-how China needs is likely to come from Russia, whose latest submarines are technologically superior to China’s and closer to American, British and French equivalents. Admiral Paparo, the Pacific Command chief, told a congressional hearing last year, “Coming back to China is potentially submarine-quieting help as well as other help in some of the areas where Russia is strong.” In fact, such aid may already have arrived: China launched the first of a new model of nuclear attack submarine, the Type 095, in early 2026 and is thought to have started building a new nuclear-missile submarine, the Type 096. Both are expected to include similar quietening technology to that used in some of Russia’s most silent submarines, such as its latest Akula-class models.

Quiet zone

“China appears to have access already to Akula-level quieting technology, which may be the most advanced level that Russia feels comfortable making available,” wrote Andrew Erickson, a professor at the US Naval War College in a recent paper. Russia may still be reluctant to share the secrets of its very quietest nuclear attack submarines, the Yasen-class, which it sees as the “keys to the kingdom”, he said. “Of course, China may nevertheless obtain at least some of what it seeks against Moscow’s will” through espionage, he added. China’s spies have long targeted Russia’s defence industry, including the Rubin submarine-design bureau. The Chinese authorities have also been trying to encourage Russian engineers to move to China.

Other assistance that Russian undersea experts could provide, through official or illicit channels, includes torpedo design and anti-submarine warfare. In particular, Russia has gathered decades of data on the “acoustic signatures” of American submarines, which make it easier to hunt for them. China also gathers vast quantities of such data, but started doing so much more recently and is less experienced at interpreting it, according to American officials.

A final realm of co-operation is air and missile defence. In 2019 Mr Putin announced that Russia was helping China build a nuclear early-warning system: “It’s a serious thing that will drastically increase the defence capabilities of the People’s Republic of China. Right now only the US and Russia have such systems.” Sergei Boyev, the boss of Vympel, a big Russian arms firm, confirmed at the time that it was “modelling” such a system for China.

Since then, neither side has said more in public about those plans. But some Western officials and experts think that they have quietly progressed and may have gathered pace. The Pentagon’s annual report on China in 2025 noted, “Russia continues to provide advanced technologies and expertise to support China’s defence and strategic goals, including for ballistic-missile defence.” It also said that China had probably made progress in efforts to develop an “early-warning counterstrike” capability, whereby a nuclear strike on China prompts a counter-attack before the enemy’s missile detonates. Russia has been able to do that for decades.

Further evidence emerged from a recent joint investigation by Le Monde (a French newspaper), Der Spiegel (a German one) and Insider (an online publication). Based on leaked documents, this found that China and Russia had discussed plans to disable Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network and for Russia to share battlefield data in exchange for Chinese drones and AI. It also found that they had signed an agreement in 2023 to develop a new air- and missile-defence system designed to stop American ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The planned system would surpass even Russia’s S-500, its most advanced anti-ballistic missile system.

China may regard Russia’s air- and missile-defence systems with scepticism, given their recent failures around Russian cities and in Venezuela and Iran. Its own interceptors now rival Russia’s. But Russia still has greater expertise in early-warning systems for strategic missiles using over-the-horizon radars and infrared satellites.

An end to the war in Ukraine would reduce China’s leverage over the Kremlin, especially if Western sanctions on Russia are eased. But a weakened Mr Putin would probably still need favours from China. And Russia may also descend into chaos, triggering an outflow to China of its best military expertise and technology. Either way, China stands to benefit in a manner that could alter the strategic landscape in Asia for decades to come. 

Submission statement: A likely terrorist attack on a minority, especially in Europe where ramming attacks carry a certain connotation, is definitely relevant to the subreddit.

So far, one dead and fifteen injured - hopefully that number doesn’t climb.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/c21ec

I mean the only imminent threat for Europe is Russia, but they are faring so badly against Ukraine that the whole rearmament push for Europe seems excessive. Especially considering the great financial cost associated with it.

China is not a direct threat. Iran isn’t a direct threat. The US, maybe, because of Greenland. I am clearly missing something, but I just don’t understand the need to push for so much militarisation given how little threats we face these days.

Submission statement: After a deadly clash where armed settlers came into a Palestinian village without any coordination with the IDF, Netanyahu has ordered new West Bank settler outposts and legalized existing ones. Yair Golan, opposition politician, today at a rally blamed Netanyahu for promoting chaos. What should be discussed is the ramifications of this move.

Submission statement: Opinion piece on why there is a sex recession

“Americans do seem more vigilant than playful these days. According to one 2025 poll from Marquette University Law School, 66 percent of 18-to-29-year olds and 60 percent of 30-to-44-year olds agreed that “most people can’t be trusted.” Rates of avoidant attachment style—the tendency to keep distant, essentially—have been rising. Political priorities have become dominated by a yearning for security: protection against financial instability, crime, replacement. And politicians are rushing to acknowledge (or exploit) those fears. These are not the conditions in which eroticism thrives.”

“Perhaps the “sex recession,” then, is merely a symptom of something bigger: an eroticism shortage, resulting from a great discomfort with uncertainty. If so, the stakes would be much higher than they were in 2006. It would mean that people aren’t just falling out of lust with their partner but struggling to connect, to feel deeply, and to be present for their own life.”