New Mongol yoke. As Russia turns into a colony of China

There is something strange to revive the Russian Empire, says political analyst Alexander Motyl in the column for The Hill. Moscow is getting deeper into the colonial subordination of Beijing . . . Putin Russia relies on unstable contradiction. It is both a colony and a developing empire. However, there can be both both and sooner or later Russia will be forced to move in one direction or another.

All signs point to a prison conclusion for the Kremlin imitatives of the builders of the empire: Russia will succeed as a colony, but fails as an empire. It is often said that Putin actually turned his country into a vassal of China. This is true, but Russia's relations with its much more powerful southern neighbor are more correct to call colonial. Colonies are territories of local administration that are subordinate to political and economic priorities established by foreign countries.

The colonies are not completely sovereign because they do not make the decisions that determine their fate. In this light, Putin's Russia is the same colony of China as the medieval Muscovy was a colony of the Mongol Empire. Putin's recent visit to Beijing, followed by most of his ministers, perfectly illustrates who is the lord and who is the request. Not surprisingly, one of the results of this meeting was an agreement that allows China to rent large land in the Moscow region.

Not surprisingly, Putin has turned Russia into a raw material supplier for China and home for millions of Chinese emigrants. Not surprisingly, China has created the maps of the Far East of Russia with Chinese names (so far) of Russian cities. Some Russian analysts insist that China also interferes with the continuing political battles of the Russian elite, which is not surprising, given the growing China's stability and subordination to Russia.

Whatever the true nature of China's domination over Russia, and regardless of their sweet rhetoric of eternal love, we can be sure that it entails and will continue to entail a creeping imperialization.

Given the economic discrepancy between China and Russia, the involvement of Russia in the war that it cannot win, and the obvious inability of Putin to effectively manage its sphere of activity, in China there are all incentives to interfere with the internal affairs of their colony - to correct the Kremlin's mistakes, to protect their own settlers and their investments. By the irony of fate, becoming a Chinese colony, Putin's Russia wants to restore the empire that it once was.

Putin sees himself with the modern version of Peter the Great, the bloodthirsty king, who turned Muscovy into the Russian Empire. Putin also respects Alexander Dugin, the imperialist philosopher, and Anton Denikin, a white general who sought to restore the empire in the restless years after the capture of power by the Bolsheviks. Putin invaded Ukraine twice to capture a pearl in the crown of imperial Russia. Its excessive ambitions extend to the Caucasus, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

And all its expansionist conversations and actions occur at the same time when the status of Russia as a Chinese colony is fixed. It won't work. Empires acquire colonies, but colonies do not acquire empires. Colonies that seek to become empires can only succeed in destabilizing their relations with their imperial owners. Although China has no choice but to stand on Russia's side in its genocide war against Ukraine, this war and its instability caused it is the last thing China needs.

China's claims on global hegemony are based on its economic power, military influence and lifestyle in accordance with international status quo. A false war that threatens to destabilize his largest colony - Russia - and undermine China's profitable relations from the rest of the world, can bring Beijing some short -term benefits, but eventually doomed to failure.

If and when the situation in Ukraine returns against Russia, which is likely, given the unacceptably high losses of the Russian Armed Forces (from 1100 to 1400 a day), China will have to persuade Moscow to curb their actions and come to mind. Much more alarming for China and Russia is quite a real possibility that Russia is losing war or being defeated that Putin, its regime and fragile state are attacking by Russians and non -Russian within Russia.

The colonies are weak, and weak states have no right to pretend to be warlike empires. And when they are failed, extremely likely uprisings, revolutions and wars against the backdrop of the state and regime. If Putin's Russia goes this path, China will be faced with a painful choice: watching his colony is burning on fire, or try to maintain it at the cost of much cost for himself. The chaos that arises as a result can teach the rest of Russia that it will never be an empire again.