Paul Goble
Staunton, June 23 – Moscow is going to find it harder to ignore protests in the Altai Republic against the elimination of local government organs and the heavy-handedness of the Kremlin-appointed governor now that veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine are joining the continuing and growing protests.
For background on these protests and their increasing politicization, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/protests-in-altay-kray-likely-puts-on.html; for a report that soldiers Moscow drafted and recruited from the Altai Republic to serve in Ukraine are back and protesting, see holod.media/2025/06/23/zhiteli-respubliki-altaj-brosili-vyzov-kremlyu/.
Moscow and its appointees in the Altai Republic have assumed that they can ignore even mass protests there because they involve a small nation most of whose residents live in rural areas as such actions and the repression the republic head is visiting on them won’t attract the attention in the Russian capital or abroad that might limit the Kremlin’s freedom of action.
But the appearance of veterans in the ranks of an ethnic protest against Kremlin policy is yet another reminder that men who agreed to serve in Putin’s war in Ukraine for money may be an even bigger problem than anyone had imagined, especially if these men decide that Moscow must not ignore their interests if they fought for its.
That is potentially a far larger threat to the Putin regime than whatever happens in the small Altai Republic.
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