Moscow’s Use of Men from Non-Russian Regions as Cannon Fodder Nothing New but Now Much Worse than Ever Before, ‘Free Idel-Ural’ Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – That Moscow has drawn a far greater percentage of men in non-Russian republics and poorer Russian regions to fight and in many cases die in Ukraine than has been the case in Moscow and Russian cities isn’t news. Indeed, it has sparked a debate as to whether this reflects economic factors or more sinister calculations.
    But an activist from the Free Idel Ural movement says that Moscow not only has long discriminated in this way but is now doing so in a more extreme way than earlier (idel-ural.org/archives/na-vojne-s-gytlerovczamy-erzya-pogybaly-v-367-raza-chashhe-chem-moskvychy-chto-yzmenylos-s-teh-por/).
    During World War II, he writes on the basis of official data, 8.05 percent of the residents of Moscow in 1941 died, a figure 3.67 times smaller than that for a district in Mari El for which deaths in the war are reported. There almost 30 percent of the population died fighting in the war against Germany.
    But now, in Putin’s war in Ukraine, the difference in deaths in combat between non-Russians and Muscovites is far greater, with the share of the former dying in the fighting in Ukraine 30 to as many as 70 times the percentage of the latter (idel-ural.org/archives/kak-kreml-czelenapravlenno-unichtozhaet-korennye-narody-v-vojne-vzglyad-iz-ukrainy/).
    Such figures make it difficult to insist that this pattern reflects economic conditions alone and adds weight to the arguments of those who say that Putin is trying to protect Russians especially in the largest cities and doing so at the expense of non-Russians who live further away from the Kremlin.