Kalmyks Resist Moscow’s Dumping Its Agents from Donbass into Non-Russian Republics

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 11 – The largest demonstrations in the past month in the non-Russian republics have not been in Sakha or Buryatia but in Kalmykia, and they have been profoundly political with the population objecting to Moscow’s imposition of a former head of the DNR as mayor of the republic’s capital city, Yaroslav Zolotaryev says.

            Not only is Dmitry Trapezhnikov not a Kalmyk or a Russian with experience there, the regional specialist points out, but he is a representative of the puppet republics Moscow set up in Ukraine’s Donbass and can be expected to bring both the instability of that region and more of his former DNR colleagues to Kalmykia (region.expert/elista/).

            Kalmyks are outraged. As Valery Badmayev, the head of the Congress of the Oyrat-Kalmyk People which organized the protests over the last six weeks, put it, “the leadership of the DNR consists of criminals who after the collapse of this Kremlin project are being inserted into the national republics of Russia, bringing Putin’s political trash to the unhappy Kalmyks.”

            On October 1, after Trapezhnikov’s appointment was announced, “hundreds” of Kalmyks came into streets to protest. The authorities first ignored them and then dismissed the meeting as “a provocation” while praising Trapezhnikov as “a valuable specialist.”  Putin’s press secretary seconded that thus showing exactly where the order for this appointment came from.

            A second demonstration on October 13 demanded not only the ouster of Trapezhnkov but also that of Yury Zaytssev, the head of the Kalmyk government. And on October 27, as many as 5,000 Elista residents came out to protest against both. That is roughly five percent of the city’s population. A Moscow demonstration of proportional size would have to number 600,000.

            This third meeting added a new demand: the holding of a referendum to restore the direct election of the mayor. Kalmyks are especially worried that if Trapezhnikov remains in place, he will oust Kalmyks in the government in order to find places for his friends from Ukraine’s Donbass.

            Given that the Kalmyks face the same problems other numerically small peoples of Russia do – a Moscow campaign to destroy their national language and the replacement of their national culture with “an all-empire surrogate,” that would compound their difficulties.  And so the protests will continue.

            According to Zolotaryev, this is evidence of that fact that “the national and regional agenda of this fall will become no less important than the environmental” and that “wen the national, regional and environmental movement comes together, one can expect some serious shocks for the Putin regime.”