Their Husbands Now Fighting in Ukraine, North Caucasian Women Forced to Commit More Crimes to Survive

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 22 – Their husbands having gone to Ukraine to fight for Putin’s war, women in the republics of the North Caucasus are committing ever more crimes, most often fraud, to get the resources they need to support themselves and their families, yet another way the war in Ukraine is coming home to Russia in negative ways.

            According to a Daghestani informant speaking on condition of anonymity, Daghestan has always been the poorest of Russia’s federal subjects and the war in Ukraine has only made things worse (kavkazr.com/a/ostalisj-bez-kormiljtsev-pochemu-na-kavkaze-rastet-zhenskaya-prestupnostj/32742910.html).

            Women have been left without their breadwinners, and they have not received the assistance Moscow has promised. As a result, they have turned to crime in order to avoid paying for some things like communal services or to obtain money under false pretenses by means of fraud.

            Few North Caucasian women have been imprisoned, an indication that most of these crimes are relatively minor; but the numbers of this group engaging in criminal activity are growing and likely will continue to do so as long as the war in Ukraine goes on, something that will inevitably contribute to an unraveling of the social fabric in the North Caucasus.