Moscow fighting indigenous peoples

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Vladimir Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” is far from the Kremlin’s first attempt to export its ideological narrative abroad. However, instead of worrying about the national identity issues of peoples outside Russia, the Kremlin should stop oppressing and restricting the rights of those ones who now live within the country.

Over the past 30 years, the deliberate policy of destroying ethnic diversity and dismantling federalism in Russia has led to the following:

• the number of indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation is rapidly declining;
• since 2018, the state languages of the national republics in the Russian Federation have ceased to be compulsory for study in secondary schools, and the deliberate Russification leads to their decline;
• the Kremlin policy of administrative consolidation has led to the disappearance of six national autonomous areas during the past 5 years;
• the banning of national parties and their termination in 2001 made the development of political institutions in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Buryatia, Yakutia, and other republics completely impossible.

Read the Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory Anton Drobovych ’s article to find out how Moscow fought against indigenous people’s national movements and identities:

Anton Drobovych: on historical unity in the prison of nations