Almost from the beginning of Putin’s war in Ukraine, there have been reports suggesting that non-Russians and Russians from distant rural regions have suffered larger combat losses in the fighting than ethnic Russians and urban residents.
The most probable explanation for this pattern is that non-Russians (especially from the North Caucasus) and rural Russians are disproportionately represented in the army, rather than that commanders are using them as cannon fodder (see Potential Wildcard in Ukrainian Conflict: Russian Army Not Ethnically Homogeneous and Russia’s Military Draft—Serious Problems That Go Beyond Ukraine).
Russian soldiers admit heavy losses, looting, shelling civilians in phone calls to wives and mothers
But because many non-Russian casualties are now being returned home to be buried in their own national republics and because ethnic Russian casualties from small towns and villages likely get more attention there than victims in large cities, many in both places appear to believe that Moscow is using them unfairly.
Ukraine’s Muslim leaders united against Putin’s war; Russia’s very much divided
Now comes the first report of a protest by Muslim women about the use of Muslim men in Russian combat operations in Ukraine. The Idel-Ural portal reports that in Karachay-Cherkessia federal subject of the Russian Federation, women on March 20 blocked traffic to demand the authorities provide them with information on their relatives who were sent to fight in Ukraine but now can’t be contacted.
Six of the women involved were detained and convicted of violating Russian laws governing the holding of demonstrations. The portal cites a local Internet site on this point, but adds that at present “no more details are available.”
Read More:
- Russian occupiers launch war on Ukrainian history, burning books and destroying archives
- Ukraine still drastically lacks weapons to defend its airspace, says Ukraine’s Air Force Command
- Timothy Snyder: If Ukrainians hadn’t fought back, the world would’ve been a much darker place
- “Putin is at war with the West in Ukraine” – historian Hrytsak on the main reason of war
- Russian soldiers admit heavy losses, looting, shelling civilians in phone calls to wives and mothers
