Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

Regional, local, and federal government institutions have also worked to execute Russia’s compatriot policies. From the late 1990s to late 2000s, the Moscow City Council and Yuri Luzhkov, the longtime mayor of Moscow (1992–2010), were prominent supporters of compatriot policies. During Luzhkov’s tenure as mayor, he reportedly spent hundreds of millions of dollars from Moscow’s well-padded city budget in the near abroad.⁵³ Among other initiatives, he founded so-called Luzhkov scholarships for ethnic Russian students from post-Soviet countries (in parallel with scholarships from the Russian Ministry of Education). In 2003, the City of Moscow also launched its own compatriot policy via its Department for Foreign Economic Activity and International Relations.⁵⁴ These policies included programs such as political and economic assistance to compatriots in Crimea, while also supporting the populace of the peninsula in gaining greater political autonomy from Kiev.⁵⁵

Funds for various compatriot causes are allocated simultaneously through a large variety of government organizations and programs. For instance, in 2011 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs allocated 400 million rubles (approximately $14 million) annually for the compatriot policy through its embassies.⁵⁶ At the same time, the Ministry of Science and Education agreed on a 2011–15 budget for the Russian Language Program of 2.5 billion rubles (approximately $88 million).⁵⁷ In May 2011, President Medvedev announced the creation of the Foundation for Supporting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry to be a “permanent, systemic and effective system to protect the interests of our compatriots.”⁵⁸ The Fund’s official purpose was to “render legal and organizational assistance to compatriots whose rights are violated abroad…. The new organization will also monitor violations of their rights.”⁵⁹ The foundation has allegedly been involved in helping finance separatist and militia groups in eastern Ukraine. In May 2014 the Ukrainian security services confiscated the bank accounts of a Ukrainian organization Dar Zhizhni (Gift of Life) that in April 2014 received 8 million rubles (approximately $250,000) from the foundation, and according to a Ukrainian court decision had been using the funds to provide financial and media support to extremists in the Donbas to advance separatism and pro-Russian propaganda.⁶⁰

Moscow also institutionalizes the compatriots through various other cultural organizations, including the Russkiy Mir Foundation and the Russkiy Dom network. Throughout the 2000s the ideological concept of the “Russian World” gained strength on the back of Russkiy Dom, which was established in 1999 to promote Russian values, language, and culture as well as offering legal protection to Russians.⁶¹ By 2011 Russkiy Dom’s annual budget was some $30 million, with over fifty centers across the globe, including such disparate countries as Germany, Latvia, the United States, Switzerland, and Mexico.⁶² Likewise, Russia lends support to various transnational movements and organizations of the post-Soviet space that have historical or cultural ties to Russia and are deemed to be part of the Russian World. One example is the Cossacks, an East Slavic people with strong military and Orthodox Christian traditions living across Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and beyond. They have enjoyed Moscow’s political, financial, and even military support for their separatist movements and have fought on the Russian side in the wars of Transnistria, Georgia, and most recently Ukraine where they have formed a short-lived and self-proclaimed separatist Cossack People’s Republic in the east of the country, which eventually was liquidated and incorporated into the Luhansk People’s Republic.⁶³