Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree stipulating the possibility of sending foreign Russian military personnel outside the country to participate in peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations.
This decree fits well into the strategy of transforming the Russian state and specifically its armed forces into a new imperial project on the territory of the former USSR. And, if we turn to history, we can say that it was inevitable …
Russia could never develop as a nation state (we will definitely return to Alexander III and his mistakes in one of the following articles). As soon as she stepped on this path, she fell apart (already twice).
Mindful of this experience, as well as having behind it the experience of previous generations, the leadership of today's Russia, step by step, began to transform its army.
2015 year
In the very first days of this post-Maidan year, the decree of the Russian President "On Amendments to the Regulations on the Procedure for Performing Military Service, Approved by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1237 of September 16, 1999" regulated the participation in hostilities of foreigners - servicemen of the Russian army. First of all, this concerned the citizens of the CIS countries.
As we understand, such a measure at that moment was a useful precaution and it became another milestone in the transformation of the Russian army from a "national" into an imperial one.
By the footsteps of the ancestors
The Moscow kingdom, the Russian kingdom, the Russian empire, the USSR, they all followed this path.
The princes, and then the kings from the Rurik dynasty, attracted foreigners to their army very widely. And this gave them the opportunity to win, in a seemingly hopeless situation, when the principality was actually squeezed between Lithuania and the hostile Horde that had become by that time.
The Romanovs almost immediately upon their accession to the throne began to form the regiments of the new system. He especially loved to do this … not even Peter I, but his father Alexei Mikhailovich, whose drive to reform his army was inherited by his youngest son.
There is no need to mention in detail the 1920s-1940s, when Joseph Stalin, collecting lands that had fallen away from the empire in times of troubles, always preliminarily formed "local" armed forces on his territory.
Such were the requirements of the time. How do the current reforms of the Russian army differ from all these actions? Formally - to many. In fact, nothing. New times also require new forms. Russia has grown stronger and is already returning to those territories that it used to consider as a zone of its influence. With what and with whom she will return there, we must think today. And she thinks.
Instead of an afterword
The siloviki in Russia have already become the elite of society. And not a closed caste, but an open system, as has always been the case in the Russian army. The attraction of foreign citizens and, first of all, citizens of the CIS, allows Moscow to quickly form the backbone of its influence for these territories as well. This is already pure imperial politics. And it is already impossible not to notice these transformations.
That is why opponents in the face of the United States are desperately trying to interfere with the process, but they rushed too late. Washington itself is rapidly slipping into its own systemic crisis, and every year its influence in the world will decline. At the same time, Russia's influence will only grow and sooner or later the tools it is creating now for solving its geopolitical problems will be applied.
