From Periphery to Frontline: Ethnic Minority Rights in Wartime Russia
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped not only international borders but also deepened domestic patterns of repression.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped not only international borders but also deepened domestic patterns of repression. Under the guise of patriotic unity, the Kremlin has launched a simultaneous internal offensive targeting the country’s ethnic minorities—reinforcing entrenched hierarchies and reviving imperial mechanisms of control.
This campaign is best understood through the framework of internal colonialism, a concept often applied in post-Soviet and post-imperial scholarship to describe how a dominant center exercises control over ethnically distinct and geographically peripheral regions. These are home to both titular nations and Indigenous communities. The tools of this control—forced military conscription, cultural marginalization, and political repression—are not mere wartime anomalies. They reflect a longstanding system of authoritarian centralization that regards ethnic diversity as a threat rather than an asset.
Within this framework, the war has served as both a pretext and a catalyst for accelerating the state’s efforts to enforce cultural uniformity, silence opposition, and extract both human and symbolic capital from the outer edges of the federation. Meanwhile, the ethnic Russian heartland remains relatively insulated from the war’s costs. The outcome is a deeply unequal structure in which minority populations are disproportionately exposed to harm—whether through combat deaths, legal persecution, or the dismantling of their educational and cultural institutions.
1. Coerced Conscription and Demographic Targeting
Mediazona’s 2023 analysis of Russian military deaths pointed to a striking regional disparity: a disproportionate share of recorded casualties came from regions with large ethnic minority populations, such as Buryatia, Tuva, and Dagestan—despite their relatively small share of the national population. In Buryatia, which makes up less than 1% of Russia’s population, independent estimates suggest that the per capita death rate has ranked among the highest nationwide. These patterns, documented through crowdsourced databases and independent journalism, have raised concerns among observers about the uneven geographic and ethnic distribution of wartime losses in Russia.
This conscription strategy is not without precedent. Russian military and administrative practices since the Soviet era have tacitly relied on peripheral regions to supply disproportionate human resources for high-risk deployments—a trend that continues today under conditions of reduced media scrutiny and federal control over regional recruitment offices. By disproportionately drawing soldiers from minority and peripheral regions, the government minimizes the political risk of domestic unrest in cities like Moscow or St. Petersburg. While major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg have not been spared entirely—experiencing isolated casualties and sporadic anti-war protests—they remain relatively insulated from the full human and social costs of the war, especially when compared to Russia’s ethnic peripheries. Sending men from impoverished, non-Russian communities to die serves both as a buffer against backlash and as a mechanism for reaffirming internal colonial hierarchies. When women in Dagestan and other republics protested military mobilization, they were met with brutal crackdowns, threats, and arrests.
These acts made one truth painfully clear: for many of Russia’s ethnic minorities, the war is not a distant geopolitical struggle but an immediate, personal crisis of survival and exclusion. Similar dynamics have been observed globally—such as in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast and China’s Xinjiang—where peripheral ethnic minorities are disproportionately subjected to forced conscription, surveillance, and population control.
2. Cultural Suppression Accelerated by War
Long before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government had already begun dismantling protections for minority languages and cultural autonomy. A pivotal 2018 federal law eliminated the requirement for schools in ethnic republics to offer local languages as mandatory subjects. Recent federal education reforms have significantly reduced protections for minority language instruction by removing mandatory status for local languages. While some regional authorities continue to offer these languages as electives, the loss of federal guarantees and support has led to a widespread decline in their use and instruction. Since that change, instruction in languages such as Tatar, Bashkir, Udmurt, and Mari has consistently declined.
Studies show a marked reduction in indigenous language instruction hours across multiple republics between 2018 and 2021, with particularly steep declines in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Simultaneously, the number of qualified teachers for minority language education fell sharply, a result of both dwindling institutional support and increased administrative pressure to prioritize Russian-language curricula.
This decline has accelerated since the outbreak of war. Under the rhetoric of patriotism and national unity, authorities have intensified efforts to consolidate Russian identity at the expense of minority cultures.
Those who resist these shifts—teachers, local officials, and cultural advocates—frequently face repercussions, including threats, job loss, or legal reprisals. A prominent example is Kalmyk activist Batyr Boromangnaev, a leader in the Oirat–Kalmyk cultural revival and former regional head of the Yabloko party. For his anti-war stance and advocacy for indigenous rights, he was subjected to administrative sanctions and legal pressure. In August 2023, a regional court labeled the Congress of the Oirat–Kalmyk People—his organization—as an “extremist group.” Just weeks earlier, in July 2023, Boromangnaev and fellow activist Arslang Sandzhiev were fined under Russia’s extremism legislation. Other members of their movement have reported surveillance, travel restrictions, and coercion to leave the country.
By the end of 2023, independent civil society monitors had documented that dozens of regional NGOs, media platforms, and cultural associations—many representing ethnic minority communities—were officially designated as “foreign agents.” One high-profile example is the Free Buryatia Foundation, added to the list in 2023. This classification often leads to home raids, forced shutdowns, and criminal proceedings, effectively dismantling grassroots institutions focused on cultural preservation and civic engagement. The state’s message is clear: under wartime conditions, expressions of ethnic diversity are not merely discouraged—they are actively criminalized.
A demographic overview of the Russian Federation reveals that over 20 republics and autonomous regions are home to sizable populations of titular nationalities and constitutionally recognized Indigenous peoples. Cross-referencing this geographic diversity with verified data on wartime mobilization and combat fatalities reveals a stark pattern: minority regions bear a disproportionate share of the war’s human costs. Mapping these figures exposes a stratified and racialized conscription system that raises urgent questions about justice, inclusion, and the militarization of Russia’s ethnic periphery.
3. Securitization of Identity
Demands for equality, regional self-governance, or the preservation of minority languages are increasingly met not with dialogue, but with surveillance, intimidation, and prosecution. In recent years, Bashkir activists have been targeted with charges of extremism and separatism. A prominent example is Fail Alsynov, a co-founder of the Bashkort civic movement, who was sentenced in late 2022 to four years in prison on charges of “inciting interethnic hatred” after delivering a speech defending Bashkir language rights. His prosecution was widely viewed as a deliberate warning to other regional advocates working on cultural or environmental issues.
Rather than recognizing and celebrating its multiethnic composition, the Russian state enforces loyalty through enforced conformity. Even nonviolent expressions of identity or dissent are often treated as threats to national security. For many ethnic minorities, the simple act of asserting their cultural heritage has become fraught with danger. The boundary between legitimate dissent and state-defined treason has grown increasingly blurred.
This securitization of identity recalls patterns from the Soviet era, when ethnic expression was permitted only in depoliticized, controlled forms. Today, similar dynamics are reemerging: cultural or linguistic autonomy is tolerated only so long as it poses no challenge to centralized power. In the current climate, loyalty is not gauged by civic participation or contribution, but by silence, compliance, and displays of allegiance. Failure to conform invites repression. What the state demands is not merely obedience—it is the suppression of difference.
4. Internal Colonialism Exposed
A unifying thread among these repressive measures is the enduring colonial logic that has historically shaped Moscow’s approach to its peripheral republics. Although the Russian Federation formally presents itself as a multiethnic state, its structure and policies often resemble those of an empire, where an ethnic Russian core exerts control over a mosaic of subordinated minority regions.
The war in Ukraine has laid bare this imperial dynamic. The disproportionate conscription of men from minority areas and the simultaneous suppression of their cultural institutions reflect a longstanding mentality of domination and extraction. Russia’s military aggression abroad is mirrored by its internal governance strategy: both seek to neutralize pluralism through control and assimilation.
This pattern is far from new. Regions such as Chechnya, Tatarstan, and the North Caucasus have long served as proving grounds for centralized coercion and colonial management. What the current war has done is expand the scale and intensity of these practices. The same top-down logic that fuels external conquest now also drives domestic cultural policies—most notably in places like Mari El and Bashkortostan.
Educational reforms presented as neutral or modernizing initiatives are, in practice, mechanisms for homogenization. Under the guise of promoting patriotism and national cohesion, these measures strip away linguistic rights, erase historical narratives, and marginalize local identities. The outcome is the construction of a singular, state-endorsed Russian identity—one that leaves little room for cultural difference or regional autonomy.
5. Ignored Warnings, Emerging Resistance
Despite the severity of these developments, the international community has largely overlooked the situation facing Russia’s ethnic minorities. Global attention remains rightly focused on the devastation in Ukraine, but this narrow lens risks missing internal dynamics that are crucial to understanding the resilience—and the fragility—of the Russian regime. Repression within Russia’s borders, particularly in its ethnically diverse regions, plays a key role in sustaining Moscow’s centralized authority.
In recent years, exiled advocacy groups such as Free Buryatia, Free Idel-Ural, and various Tatar and Bashkir organizations have begun to challenge this internal imperialism. As of 2025, Russian authorities have escalated efforts to suppress these diaspora movements, including pursuing legal action against individual activists and dismantling affiliated organizations within the country. Reports from human rights watchdogs such as OVD-Info and Memorial document a renewed crackdown on regional and cultural advocacy.
Founded in exile in 2022, the Free Buryatia Foundation continues to publish evidence of unequal conscription and casualty rates affecting Buryat communities. In parallel, Free Idel-Ural campaigns for greater autonomy—and ultimately, self-determination—for six republics in the Volga region. Through digital platforms, they document patterns of repression, linguistic marginalization, and ecological degradation.
These movements raise urgent, unresolved questions about identity, rights, and justice—questions that a ceasefire alone cannot answer. If, in the postwar period, Russia fails to engage with the legitimate demands of its ethnic peripheries—for cultural recognition, local governance, and historical redress—then the illusion of national unity will continue to erode. Repressed identities do not disappear; they return more forcefully when denied.
In conclusion, Russia’s wartime policies have intensified longstanding patterns of repression against ethnic minorities, reinforcing internal hierarchies through conscription, cultural assimilation, and legal persecution. At the same time, grassroots resistance is emerging across the federation—though it remains underrecognized in international discourse. For any post-war transition to be stable and inclusive, these internal dynamics must be acknowledged and addressed.