Sobyanin’s Talk about How Many Muscovites are Fighting in Ukraine Only Highlights How Few Are

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that “about 90,000” residents of the Russian capital are taking part in Putin’s war in Ukraine, a statistic he and the Kremlin clearly hope will quiet charges that Muscovites are not doing so at anything like the share of non-Russians and ethnic Russians from poorer regions.

            But that figure (kp.ru/daily/27742/5133043/) almost certainly will have exactly the opposite effect. Because Moscow’s population is so much larger than any other federal subject, the 90,000 Sobyanin says are serving in Ukraine is less than two percent of the draft-age male residents of the capital.

            That compares with as many as half of the male residents of some non-Russian  republics and almost that large a share of males in poorer but primarily ethnic Russian oblasts and krays – yet another indication that Moscow, which benefits more from the Putin system than any other federal subject is not paying its way in this way either.