More soldiers in the central Russian regions of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan have died than in any other region of the country, with more soldiers dying in recent weeks, according to a confirmed tally of combat deaths compiled by RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Bureau. A sharp increase has been recorded.
This tally, partially corroborated by a separate tally by BBC Russian Broadcasting Corporation and Mediazona, shows how much the burden of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine has fallen on Russia’s more remote regions, far from wealthy population centres. It’s the latest sign that things are falling out of proportion. Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The reason for the recent increase is not clear, but it comes two years after President Vladimir Putin surprised the country by announcing a “partial” mobilization of about 300,000 people to fight.
According to Western estimates, Russia’s total casualties, including those killed in combat, are believed to be over 500,000, the highest number of soldiers killed in the past 30 months compared to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. more than the entire decade of the invasion of Afghanistan.
The burden falls heavily on regions such as Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, which have a larger population of other ethnic groups than ethnic Russians.
“Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are not poor regions,” said Dmitry Treshchanin, editor of the Russian-language website Mediazona. The website compiles its own tally of Russian casualties in collaboration with the BBC’s Russia station.
“Tatarstan, in particular, is the envy of many other regions. It cannot be said that the people of these two republics will volunteer to fight due to lack of resources and funds,” he told RFE/RL. told. “In my opinion, there is strong pressure from the government and people are being sent ‘voluntarily or forcibly’.”
He said the situation with casualties in both regions seemed “absurd.”
“At the beginning of the war, deaths from Dagestan (the North Caucasus region) were noticeable,” Treshchanin said. “But now we often see Tatar and Bashkir names like Marat and Marcel.”
death on the volga
The Russian government has been notoriously silent about the war’s losses since it launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. The last official statistics were released in September 2022, with 5,937 Russian soldiers killed. At the time, the Ukrainian side reported Russian losses nearly 10 times that amount.
This makes it difficult for reporters, analysts, and outside observers to fully grasp the impact of war on particular populations.
Still, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, analysts have noted the disproportionate number of non-ethnic Russians among the country’s military casualties.
As of September 26, 3,026 people had been confirmed dead in the central Volga republic of Bashkortostan, which has a population of just over 4 million people, according to an RFE/RL tally. RFE/RL’s tally uses social media announcements, obituaries, and other open sources to collect data.
In Tatarstan, which has a similar population, RFE/RL recorded 2,740 deaths in the region*.
A recent tally by BBC Russia/Mediazona, using a similar method, confirmed 2,705 deaths in Bashkortostan and 2,259 in Tatarstan.
In addition to mobilized soldiers sent to fight in Ukraine, prison inmates, mercenaries from private military companies, and even “contractoniki” — including widows — were lured by exorbitant wages and benefits for veterans. This includes men who voluntarily sign combat contracts. And the survivors.
Rady Khabilov (left), head of the Bashkortostan region, meets with volunteers from the region near the front lines in Ukraine earlier this month.
Among Contractoniki, Bashkortostan leads Russia in the number of confirmed deaths, with 965, according to an RFE/RL tally. Tatarstan came in second with 557 volunteer deaths.
By comparison, only 135 volunteers in Moscow, an official population of more than 13 million, have been confirmed killed.
Over the past four weeks, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Bureau has added 575 names to the list of dead soldiers in both regions, nearly 20 per day.
The confirmed numbers are believed to be a significant undercount, given the difficulty in identifying deaths amid official secrecy.
It is also unclear exactly how many people from Bashkortostan and Tatarstan are being sent to fight in Ukraine, including contractoniki, prison inmates, and mobilized troops.
Statistics or tragedy?
Tatar political analyst Ruslan Aysin said Moscow was paying “special attention” to the Volga region, and as part of that, the Kremlin was trying to “disrupt the political status” of the so-called ethnic republics. He said that there are deliberate attempts to do so in various regions of Russia. It is known that there is a large population of non-ethnic Russians.
He said Putin’s government was trying to shore up support for the war, or at least assuage dissatisfaction, by minimizing the cost of casualties among ethnic Russians living in large cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. .
Aisin said that for authorities, each service member’s death is “just a statistic.”
“But for the republic, for ethnic groups and for individual families, this is a great tragedy,” he said. “There is a huge gap between leaders and the general public.
In January, protests in Bashkortostan over the sentencing of Fail Arshinov, a popular activist who has long championed minority rights and the Bashkir language and culture, to four years in prison for inciting ethnic hostility. A wave of nonviolent protests broke out.
Analysts say the protests were fueled in part by simmering discontent about the cost of the Ukraine war to the region.
“Currently, most of the dead are volunteers.”
On September 20, the BBC Russia/Mediazona project (which tracks war deaths by monitoring funeral notices and other open source data) said it had confirmed the deaths of more than 70,000 soldiers nationwide. Reported.
In the early stages of the war, the average Russian war casualty was a contract soldier in his early 20s, the project noted. But now the typical dead are volunteers in their 40s, 50s or even 60s, “and in most cases have no military experience or specialized training.”
According to the report, the oldest reported victim was a 71-year-old volunteer.
Ruslan Sadikov, a Tatarstan soldier, was killed in 2022 near Mariupol, Ukraine.
Treshchanin said that about 12.7% of all Russian soldiers who died were caught up in the September 2022 mobilization order. Officials say around 300,000 people were mobilized, but some analysts believe the number is much higher.
Overall, BBC Russia/Mediazona estimated the total number of casualties across the country to range from 107,000 to 155,000.
Western estimates are similar.
In May, then-French Foreign Minister Stephane Séjourne said that about 150,000 Russian soldiers had been killed. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in June that at least 300,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded, calling it “the price Russia has paid for President Putin’s imperial ambitions.”
Treshchanin said there is a backlog of about 4,000 names that he and his colleagues are checking.
But he said the main trend now involves volunteers who have recently gone to fight.
“It is not uncommon for the obituaries of men who went to war in July to be published already in August,” Treshchanin said.
*This article has been amended to update death tolls for Bashkortostan and Tatarstan.
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