Another Sign – This Time in Altai Republic – Moscow May be About to Restart Regional Amalgamation

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 24 – The clearest indications that Putin plans to restart his regional amalgamation effort have come in the Russian north, where new moves to unify the Nenets AD with Arkahngelsk Oblast are underway (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/kremlin-to-unite-nenets-ad-with.html).

    But now there is another, this time in the Altai Republic, a small federal subject – it covers 92,000 square kilometers, and has a population of 210,000, just over half of which are ethnic Russians while 37 percent are members of the composite Altai nationality – which borders China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

    There, the federal subject head, Andrey Turchak, is pressing for changes in the Russian constitution which he says will bring it into line with all-Russian rules but which some Altai fear opens the door to changes including the dropping of its defense of the republic’s territorial integrity (mariuver.com/2025/04/24/v-rossii-gotovjatsja-k-likvidacii-nacionalnyh-regionov/).

    Such changes have already happened elsewhere, and Altai residents fear the same thing may be about to happen to their republic. Such fears have been triggered by Turchak’s failure to publish a complete list of the changes he wants and that could lead to the amalgamation of the republic with neighboring Altai Kray, whose population is 95 percent ethnic Russian.

    Such a combination would be consistent with what Putin has done in the past, although his efforts at combining smaller non-Russian regions with larger and predominantly ethnic Russian ones have been slowed by protests and by both the impact of the covid pandemic and of his military campaign in Ukraine.  

    The Altai Republic seldom gets much attention, but it has the potential for protests and thus causing the Kremlin problems if it pushes for its amalgamation with the Altai Kray. (On that possibility, see https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-mountainous-altai-where-russians.html, https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/not-everyone-from-altai-republic.html and https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/moscow-alarmed-by-talk-in-kazakhstan.html.)