Moscow Now Singling Out Ethnic Ukrainians Living in ‘Wedges’ inside Russian Federation as ‘Extremists and Terrorists,’ Kyiv Study Documents

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 6 – Before Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine, only about five percent of those on Moscow’s register of extremists and terrorists were ethnic Ukrainians, had Ukrainian names or were citizens of Ukraine. Now, that figure has risen to approximately 50 percent of a much higher total, Kyiv researcher Nina Belyaeva says.

            But among Ukrainians put on this list, she reports, it is noteworthy that a disproportionate share of those charged are from regions where ethnic Ukrainians have traditionally lived, the so-called “wedges” (kliny). There, those with Ukrainian names are approximately twice as likely to be declared extremists or terrorists than are those without such names.

            Not surprisingly, Belyaeva continues, many Ukrainians there are hiding their ethnicity by Russianizing their names and by declaring themselves ethnic Russians or no nationality at all in the latest Russian census, a practice that led to the more than halving of the total number of ethnic Ukrainians between the 2010 and 2020/21 censuses. 

(For Belyaeva’s report, see abn.org.ua/en/analysis/criminalization-of-ethnicity-how-ethnic-ukrainians-in-russia-are-declared-terrorists/; for background on the history of these wedges and Moscow’s growing concern about attitudes there, see jamestown.org/moscow-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-in-russia-and-their-growing-support-from-abroad/.).)

This problem has not attracted the attention it deserves because Russian and Western human rights organizations seldom list such people as political prisoners and even Ukrainians both in the government and the population at large seldom talk about them or make the detention of such people an issue.

Belyaeva concludes her report on this issue by saying that “the persecution of ethnic Ukrainians in Russia is not a side effect of the war but a deliberate policy of intimidation and the eradication of all things Ukrainian from the territory of the Russian Federation,” has roots going back to Stalin’s time, and both can and must be denounced and fought.