Foreign Policy wrote that despite total media control, dissatisfaction with Putin’s war in Ukraine was growing in Russia.
Russia has been fighting Ukraine for the fourth month now, the Kremlin said everything is supposedly “going according to plan”, but even within the Russian Federation, despite the total restriction of screws, the doubts are creeping up about its veracity. “Plan”.
Foreign Policy writes about the first signs of discontent with the war in the Caucasus.
Rebellion in South Ossetia
South Ossetia, rolled out from Georgia, exists only thanks to Russia. The Kremlin decided to take charge of South Ossetian soldiers, sent to fight in Ukraine. In March alone, about 300 South Ossetian soldiers staged an uprising, refused to attack and went home. Adding to this shock was Mediazona’s subsequent publication of a conversation between some of the returned soldiers and the then president of the unrecognized republic, Anatoly Bibilov. The soldiers criticized Russia’s military leadership and wondered why they were sent to fight Russia in Ukraine. The revolt of the soldiers and the refusal of the war set the stage for Bibilov to defeat the May 8 election in the region.
The fight against nationalism in the Caucasus
On the other side of the Caucasus, in Russia itself, is North Ossetia-Alania, whose inhabitants share a common culture and language with their southern counterparts. It was also there that the war shook politics. In April, a former North Ossetian fighter for Russia’s puppet republics in eastern Ukraine was indicted under a new law for “discrediting the Russian Armed Forces” adopted to suppress protests and statements against the war in Ukraine. North Ossetian activists condemned the accusation as politically motivated. More intense anger followed after another North Ossetian survivor of the 2004 Beslan terror attack that killed more than 300 people was charged with hate speech on May 11 when he called Lenin Street in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, to replace name of honor of the Ossetians. . The Mothers of Beslan, a group of activists representing the victims of the attack, condemned the allegations.
The Kremlin, however, remains wary of nationalism in the Caucasus, a multi-ethnic region occupied and enslaved by Russia in the 19th century, the site of horrific deportations and massacres of Russian and Soviet leaders. its, and sometimes chaotic to this day.
Moscow has banned marches that are supposed to commemorate May 21, the anniversary of the genocide of the Russian imperial army of the Circassians, an ethnic group mainly living in the three northwestern Caucasian republics of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia. However, hundreds of people gathered in various places and the arrests were reported by the police. However, this is unlikely to provoke a broader movement, even if reports of Russian genocide against Ukrainians in the ongoing war are leading activists in the Circassian diaspora to draw parallels in the history of their people. .
Ingushetia
War was also felt in Ingushetia, another seemingly autonomous ethnic republic located between North Ossetia and Chechnya. The nephew of Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the former head of the region, was reportedly killed in fighting last week in Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, the elderly Yevkurov and Ingush arrived at his funeral. The absence of any hint of unrest was the sharp opposite in 2018, when significant local protests erupted following the Kremlin’s re -drawing of the Ingushetia border in favor of neighboring Chechnya.
Dagestan
Non-Russian minorities from the Caucasus and other sides of Putin’s empire dominate the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine and those who died in Putin’s war for ethnic Slavic unity. According to public obituaries and social media posts compiled by Mediazona, Dagestan leads in the total number of war deaths in all administrative regions of Russia. Given the population ratio, North Ossetia-Alania had almost 400 times more deaths in the war compared to Moscow. In Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, the ratio of the population to the number of those killed in the war also dominates significantly.
This drew some comparisons to the early stages of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, when the invading force included so many soldiers from non -Russian areas. Later, the Soviet army redeployed troops from the Soviet republics of Central Asia from forward positions, for fear that they would be too loose on the Afghan civilian population.
Some observers even argue that the war in Ukraine, which has encountered very little resistance among Russia, will lead to a national awakening in Russia’s peripheral regions, similar to a war that followed the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Rumors of that war began with small demonstrations against the war in Tajikistan in 1982, three years after the invasion. Dissatisfaction with the war also contributed to the massive unrest in Kazakhstan in 1986, the largest manifestation of local nationalism in Soviet Central Asia in decades. The successive events unleashed by the unpopular war of the Soviet Union contributed to the emergence of the first sprouts of the independence movement in Central Asia.
Source: korrespondent
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.