A growing number of countries want to discard the vestiges of imperialism, the former Russian president has argued
A growing number of countries want to break free from colonial legacies, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said.
Numerous former imperial powers in the West have imposed unprecedented sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict, triggering accusations from Moscow of neocolonialist policies.
Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, made the comments in an opinion piece titled ‘The time of colonial powers is over’ for the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper. The article was published ahead of a series of international events in the city of Vladivostok, dedicated to Russia’s chairmanship of the BRICS group.
“More and more countries […] are aspiring to live in a world […] that is free from the legacy of the colonialism and is based on […] inclusive multilateralism, sovereign equality, peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between countries that have different political and social systems,” Medvedev wrote.
The former president criticized the West’s “unceremonious interference in the affairs of independent states,” referring to the policy of “illegal” sanctions adopted by the US and its allies, and accusing Washington of undertaking numerous coup attempts abroad.
Medvedev argued that Western countries are transitioning to what he described as “global neocolonialism,” an attempt to impose a system of unequal economic and political relations on the rest of the world. He also proposed creating a UN database of crimes committed by colonial powers.
Medvedev was Russian president from 2008 to 2012, after which he served as prime minister until 2020. He is known for maintaining a hard line on the Ukraine conflict in his social media posts, which the Kremlin has never outright disavowed.
In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin described as “neocolonialism” the West’s attempts to “maintain its dominance” by economically subjugating other states, allegedly depriving them of their sovereignty while imposing alien traditions and values.
