Guest lecture by Professor Marat Shterin (King's College London)
"In this presentation, I explore Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through a postcolonial lens, examining how religion both legitimises neo-imperial ambitions and reflects enduring internal colonial hierarchies. I trace the entanglement of religious institutions and narratives with Russian state power, from imperial and Soviet legacies to contemporary discourses of sacred war and the ‘Russian World’. I then turn to Russia’s ethnic and religious minorities, exploring their disproportionate exposure to mobilisation and casualties, the pressures to demonstrate political loyalty, and the tensions between religious commitments, complicity and resistance. By foregrounding marginalised voices, I argue that the war has contributed to the construction of a neo-imperial religion in which minorities’ experiences and interpretations of faith are controlled or silenced".