Men from Rural Areas of Tatarstan Four to Five Times More Likely to have Died Relative to Population in Putin’s War in Ukraine than Residents of Kazan, Statistics Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 8 – Since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, Moscow in order to limit the impact of the war on major cities has disproportionately drawn on men from poorer but predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays and from poorer non-Russian republics and that,as a result, men from these two groups have died in combat more than others.

             But now, new data shows that in Tatarstan Moscow took more men from predominately ethnic Tatar villages per capita than it did from the ethnically mixed republic capital, Kazan, a pattern likely true in other republics too (idelreal.org/a/dva-tatarstana-risk-pogibnut-na-voyne-dlya-zhitelya-agrarnogo-rayona-rt-v-chetyre-pyat-raz-vyshe-chem-kazantsa-/33641553.html).

            The figures are stark. Men from rural areas of Tatarstan, a region that is almost exclusively Tatar in nationality and Tatar-speaking are four to five times more likely to have died in Putin’s war in Ukraine than are residents of Kazan, where there is a sizeable ethnic Russian community and many Tatars speak Russian rather than Tatar at least outside the home.

            It is certainly true that a major factor in this regard is the fact that Tatar villages are poorer and men there have fewer opportunities than do Tatars and other nationalities in Kazan and that their decision to join up reflects economic calculations on their part rather than anything else, IdelReal journalist Regina Khisamova says.

             But however that may be, this pattern has ethno-national consequences, she suggests. With the departure and death of Tatars from the villages who speak Tatar, those bastions of Tatar identity will be in even worse shape and that as a result, “two Tatarstans” are emerging, one Russian speaking and thriving and a second Tatar-speaking one dying out ever more rapidly.

            This pattern, which  all available sources show according to Khisamova, certainly will only intensify the sense many non-Russians have that Putin’s war is a genocidal one directed not only at the destruction of Ukrainians abroad but also and perhaps equally important for the Kremlin at the destruction of non-Russian nations within the current borders of the Russian Federation.