Moscow’s Efforts to Get Immigrants to Fight in Ukraine Exacerbating Ethnic Tensions in Russia, Abashin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 13 – Moscow’s efforts to fill the depleted ranks of the Russian military fighting in Ukraine by drafting or forcing immigrants in Russia to fight there is backfiring, Sergey Abashin says. Not only are ever more immigrants resisting such efforts but relations between them and the rest of Russian society are deteriorating.

            The ethnographer at St. Petersburg’s European University says the October 15 clash between two Tajik citizens in Russian uniform and 11 fellow soldiers that left all of them dead and many others wounded is only the most obvious indication of just how dangerous Moscow’s approach to immigrants as soldiers is becoming (liberal.ru/migration/migrantskij-prizyv).

            Until recently, Abashin says, Moscow’s approach to immigrants reflected tensions between those who view them as an important economic resource and those who view them as a threat to Russian society. Since February, a third view has emerged, one that holds they can serve as foot soldiers in campaigns to promote the Russian world.

            Most immigrants aren’t interested in that; but Moscow, desperately needing more men, has come up with ever more ways to try to force them to serve even if that means deception and compulsion. The result has not been good, and it threatens to become even worse, the scholar says.

            Shortly after the invasion began, the Russian military and its supporters began focusing on immigrants, seeking to get them to sign up as contract soldiers. When Putin declared his partial mobilization, that effort slowed but only for a brief time; and a week later, Russia passed a law that promised a quick path to Russian citizenship to any immigrant who agreed to serve.

            But that offer failed; and so the Kremlin, desperate for manpower from this and other sources, turned to the use of “various forms of deception and force,” especially in relation to those foreigners who have been convicted of various crimes, especially regarding migration laws, and those who had recently receive Russian citizenship, Abashin continues.

            Immigrants are increasingly angry about all this; and the governments of their homelands to which they remain attached and likely hope to return have only strengthened their resolve to resist by declaring that serving in the Russian army will put them at risk of criminal sanctions at home (aa.com.tr/ru/мир/казахстан-узбекистан-и-кыргызстан-запретили-своим-гражданам-воевать-в-украине/2691433)

            Migrants are likely going to be even more resistant to service now that the first bodies of some of those who did go to Ukraine are returning.   But the authorities show no sign of lessening their pressure on migrants to fight, and the anger of migrants about that is driving a further wedge between them and Russian society as a whole.