“The emperor only values his throne and will do anything to protect it, while all others are mere resources to be exploited,” writes Aleksandar Đokić, a Serbian political scientist and former lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow. “In other words, the Russian empire is knowingly throwing its own people, people of its own nation, into a meatgrinder, a virtual abyss.”
Having lived in Russia for more than two decades, and having ancestors who lived in Commie times and Empire times I can say said labeling the current tyrannical regime with “Empire” is a misinterpretation. With the same level of success almost any country in the modern world, even if it hides behind the words “republic” or “democracy”, can be labeled as an “Empire” too.
I dunno how many people would take issue with that, I think a fair number of people here would agree that America is an empire too for example
Yeah and america does still have colonies like Puerto Rico where people are citizens thanks to an act of congress but dont vote for president, and we have colonies with american nationals that arent citizens like American Samoa. Thats not even going into all the military bases we have around the world and the way we infiltrate other countries with our corporate interests.
America’s done some fucked up things in the last 20 years, don’t get me wrong, but absolutely nothing comes even close to the horrors of the genocidal war of imperial expansion Putin’s currently waging in Ukraine. There’s absolutely no moral equivalency between the modern US and Putin’s Russia.
Absolutely, America has done some fucked up things in the last 100 or so years, but there’s no way to justify one crime with another which is what some posters here on Lemmy often appear to suggest. I feel such attempts to portray moral equivalency is another insult to the victims of these horrors.
How does it not fit for you?
Don’t see too many “modern world” countries, as you put it, attacking neighbors in a land grab. Russia has done so several times over the last couple decades in a very colonial way. Calling it an Empire might be glib, but isn’t incorrect based on their expansion