41 Buryat Soldiers in Russian Army have Died So Far in Putin’s War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 27 – Almost from the beginning of Putin’s war in Ukraine, there have been reports suggesting that non-Russians and Russians from distant rural regions have suffered larger combat losses in the fighting than ethnic Russians and urban residents (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/03/russian-combat-losses-in-ukraine-appear.html).

            The most probable explanation for this pattern is that non-Russians (especially from the North Caucasus) and rural Russians are disproportionately represented in the army rather than that commanders are using them as cannon fodder (jamestown.org/program/potential-wildcard-in-ukrainian-conflict-russian-army-not-ethnically-homogeneous/ and jamestown.org/program/russias-military-draft-serious-problems-that-go-beyond-ukraine/).

            But because many non-Russian casualties are now being returned home to be buried in their own national republics and because ethnic Russian casualties from small towns and villages likely get more attention there than victims in large cities, many in both places appear to believe that Moscow is using them unfairly.

            There have been protests in several non-Russian republics, and the authorities have cracked down hard, actions that have only increased suspicions that Moscow is hiding something and made the issue of combat losses among non-Russians increasingly sensitive  politically (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/04/karachayevo-cherkess-women-protest.html).

            Numbers are hard to come by. Moscow is releasing only the most limited amount of information, and regional and local leaders are focusing on individual cases rather than the statistics that would throw more light on the subject. But some data are now becoming available and deserve the closest possible attention.

            The SibReal portal reports that official Russian government figures show that so far 41 soldiers from Buryatia have died in Putin’s war in Ukraine, a number people in that Buddhist republic in the Russian Far East feel deeply because the total population of the republic is less than a million (sibreal.org/a/buryaty-za-i-protiv-spetsoperatsii/31771940.html).