Narrating Kinship: Neo-Imperial Narratives and Grassroots Contestations in the Russian Near Abroad

Abstract

In 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine under the guise of protecting its ethnic kin from Ukrainianization, marking a significant escalation in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Concurrently, Transnistria, the Russophilic de facto state in Moldova, officially requested that Russia increase its military presence in the region to defend its Transnistrian kin from perceived Moldovan aggression. These events signalled a fundamental shift in how kin-minorities are conceptualized within a state's foreign policy doctrine. In both regions, Russian political elites actively worked to construct shared histories and kinship narratives to justify their foreign policy and direct military interventions. With the potential security implications of operationalizing kin-minorities as a geopolitical asset through narrative construction, this project addresses the need to re-evaluate how political actors construct kinship narratives within kin-state/kin-minority dynamics. Existing scholarship on kin-states and kin-minorities has largely emphasized elite-driven narratives, often treating kin-minorities as homogenous groups led by their political elites, thus neglecting the interactive processes through which these narratives are received and contested. To address this gap, this study develops a tripartite comparative framework which assesses how kinship narratives are developed by kin-state elites, kin-minority elites, and kin-minority publics, drawing on elite discourse, public opinion data, and previously conducted qualitative studies. I argue that kinship narratives are not simply imposed from above but negotiated across levels, producing convergences and divergences that complicate assumptions of kin-minority alignment. While Russian elites mobilize neo-imperial discourses to justify intervention, kin-minority elites often mirror these narratives for pragmatic or political gain. Further, kin-minority publics tended to exhibit more hybrid, cross-cutting identities that resist straightforward incorporation into Russia’s kinship project. By disaggregating kin-minority actors into elites and publics, thereby placing top-down and bottom-up perspectives into comparative conversation, this research advances the study of kin-state/kin-minority relations, revising the understanding of Brubaker’s Triadic Nexus and challenging the notion that kin-minority identities are constructed by elites.