Russian Nationalities Agency Says There’ve Been No Serious Ethnic Clashes in Russia Since Ukrainian War Began

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 11 – Igor Barinov, the head of the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN), tells the Duma that his institution has not recorded “a single significant ethnic or religious conflict” in the Russian Federation since the war in Ukraine assumed its current form in February 2022.

            The FADN director says that this has been the case despite what he says are Western efforts to cause them because they believe that relations between Russia’s ethnic and religious groups can be used to weaken the Kremlin (tass.ru/obschestvo/18975641 and nazaccent.ru/content/41381-fadn-s-nachala-svo-v-rossii-ne-zafiksirovali-ni-odnogo-znachimogo-mezhnacionalnogo-konflikta.html).

            He pointed to two reasons for this calm: the support the population has for the Kremlin’s policies in this area and the careful monitoring of ethnic and religious tensions which has allowed the authorities to intervene early on and effectively before small problems become large ones.

            Barinov’s statement came as he appealed for more funding to expand such monitoring and so his claims about the situation should be viewed through that optic rather than as a description of an underlying reality independent of the repressive policies of the Russian government.