By Drago Bosnic | June 27, 2022
Last week, on June 23, a United States government agency under the name Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, better known as the Helsinki Commission, held a Congressional briefing titled “Decolonizing Russia”. Democrat representative from Tennessee (D-TN) Steve Cohen opened up the presentation, during which he claimed that the Russians “have in essence colonized their own country,” arguing that Russia is “not a strict nation, in the sense that we’ve known in the past.” Casey Michel, who authored an opinion piece in The Atlantic last month, titled “Decolonize Russia”, was also present at the meeting. His op-ed seems to have been the impetus for the highly controversial briefing. According to Michel, “decolonizing Russia” is not solely about “partitioning” and “dismembering” the Russian Federation, but about an “authentic commitment to anti-imperialism.”