Vladislav Surkov, whom French readers know in the fictional figure of the “Mage of the Kremlin”, has long been the “eminence grise of the Kremlin”, notably in charge of the Ukrainian question during the pivotal period which from 2013 saw both Maidan, the illegal annexation of Crimea, the Donbass war and the Minsk agreements.
Since 2020, and for reasons that remain obscure, he has been removed from the upper echelons of power, even having been, it seems, placed under house arrest in 2022. He then reinvented himself as a publicist-ideologist , by regularly publishing articles in his name. In a Russian public debate that he has every reason to find dry and drying, Vladislav Surkov intends to propose an alternative discourse, to take a broad look at the current events which restores their secret meaning, to propose analytical and mobilizing key words for the politics of tomorrow. The “mage of the Kremlin” wants to be, in short, the “wise man” of future Russian society, betting that there will be a place for a sort of Great Russian philosopher in these uncertain times.
Its latest publication, denser than the one we included in the last volume of the Gallimard review, seeks to define the global strategic consequences which will follow “the second partition of Ukraine”, namely the treaty which will make it possible to annex from Ukrainian territories to Russia.
The argument is simple: all contemporary powers now project themselves into a “borderless” space. From Donald Trump with Greenland, Panama and Canada, to Erdogan with Syria, apparently buried imperialist impulses are resurfacing all over the world, with unequal success, but a common trend: the imitation of Putin and Russia.
For this fallen advisor, it is therefore necessary to reveal today the hidden meaning of the operation that he initiated inside the imposing red brick walls of the Kremlin.
Through an operation of theological-political alchemy, has Putin's Russia made the imperial form contemporary? No, not one transfer of powerbut – as with a new translation of an old Dostoyevsky -, a retransmission of the government.
There will be two strategic consequences of the second partition of Ukraine which is announced today – the first having been effectively enshrined by the Minsk agreements.
The first natural consequence of our victory will be the slowing down of the eastern thrust (osternization) forced from Russia.
The challenge here is not to restore a vulgar Westernism, but rather to reasonably reduce the Asian slope of the country. After all, it is towards the West that the special military operation, in the geopolitical sense, is expanding our territory, opening, so to speak, a new window on Europe.
The instinct to imitate leads to a second strategic consequence.
The Russians, as the flagship ethnos of Eurasia, have recorded considerable successes in the field of retransmission of the government.
So there are always more of those who only dream of imitating our bold, consolidated, warlike and “borderless” nation:
- Turkey intervenes in Transcaucasia and Syria in accordance with the best traditions of the Sublime Porte;
- Israel implacably pushes back its neighbors;
- China is slowly weaving its “silk roads” across all continents;
- The bawling gnomes of the Baltics are striving to mount a broken Europe and launch it into battle;
- Trump claims Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal…
In short, Russia is surrounded by doubles and parodists, unfolding a veritable parade of all possible and imaginable imperialisms, miniature or grandiose, provincial or global, often grotesque, but, even more often, serious.
The bipolar disorder which characterized international relations at the time of the confrontation between two empires, the American empire and the Soviet empire, is giving way to a multipolar disorder, which we are sometimes tempted to take for a cure.
In contemporary political language, the word imperialism is inappropriate, almost obscene. But even if we wrote “i…me” instead of “imperialism”, that would not change the observation: empires are reborn and empires clash.
In the New Year, let us wish peace to each other. And let us remind each other of this: peace is nothing other than the continuation of war by other means.
