Ethnic within Russia’s army threaten to erupt into “outright fighting”, a senior Chechen rebel leader told the Express.
Russia’s army has heavily recruited soldiers from its ethnic minorities, who make up around 20% of the country’s population.
During the war with Ukraine, there have been consistent reports of growing anger among soldiers from Russia’s indigenous republics, with many complaining about discrimination by their Russian commanders.
In the latest incident, the Ukrainian partisan group Atesh reported that there were “serious ethnic conflicts” between soldiers in Russia’s 70th Motorised Rifle Regiment.
The unit operates in the Zaporozhzhia region and has personnel from the Caucasus. Atesh reported that there had been numerous cases of “verbal abuse based on nationality” and physical violence in the regiment.
Ruslan Kutaev told the Express that ever since the outbreak of full-scale war, the problems of “ethnic incompatibility” had plagued Putin’s army.
He said: “As the persecution of Muslims in Russia intensifies, at the fronts, especially in the front-line zone, hostile relations between Russians and Muslims increase.
“There are cases of confrontation and alienation. As the war continues, this could lead to outright fighting within the Russian army itself.”
Mr Kutaev is a veteran Chechen politician who served as a minister under President Dzhokar Dudayev and then as a deputy prime minister under his eventual successor, Aslan Maskhadov, after the country declared its independence from Russia at the beginning of the 1990s.
He is currently the President of the Assembly of the People of the Caucasus, an organisation committed to creating an independent state that incorporates all the region’s nationalities.
Russian politicians have actively fanned open hostility towards ethnic minorities serving in Putin’s army.
Sergey Mironov, the chairman of the political party A Just Russia, has gone on record in the past to attack the Kremlin’s migration policy and has implied that non-Russians are not fit to serve in the country’s army.
Russia is home to around 190 ethnic groups, making it one of the most diverse countries in the world.
Initial mobilisation campaigns for the war in Ukraine disproportionally targeted ethnic minorities, according to regional activists.
Ongoing research also appears to show that Russia’s non-Slavic minorities and indigenous peoples are greatly overrepresented among the casualties relative to their share in the country’s population.
US-based Buryat scientist Maria Vyushkova told the Moscow Times: “The most dire situation is … with indigenous small-numbered peoples of the north who should be [legally] exempt from military service altogether.
“This is a terrible tragedy that no one is talking about. In one generation, these nations will simply disappear
