Where does Putin get the cannon fodder he sends to Ukraine?

MoscowOne of Vladimir Putin's great achievements on the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine is having shielded the pain of war from the major cities. How can a society that, week after week, sends thousands of men to die on the front lines not implode? The answer lies in asking Muscovites how many of their relatives, friends, or acquaintances have gone to fight. The combat death rate for soldiers from the Russian capital is the lowest in the country, at one in 5,000, followed by St. Petersburg and Chechnya. In contrast, in the Buryatia region (in the Russian Far East, bordering Mongolia), the ratio is one soldier killed for every 250 inhabitants, and in Tuva (in southern Siberia) or Chukotka (in the far northwest of Russia), it drops to one in every 200 inhabitants. The population of these areas is twenty-five times more likely to die in combat than a resident of Moscow.

According to a study by the independent Russian media outlet in exileThe BellFatality rates on the front are directly correlated with the number of inhabitants living in each region below the poverty threshold, which is set at 19,000 rubles per month (about 210 euros). The more poverty there is, the greater the incentive to enlist in the Armed Forces and earn salaries they never dreamed of making.For many Moscow residents, the salary of a conscripted soldier, five million rubles a year (about 55,000 euros), is not attractive enough, and they cannot understand how anyone would risk their life for such a sum. This study also warns that the deteriorating Russian economy could lead even more people to enlist.

However, Maria Viushkova believes it's not just about money. This Buryat scientist was the first to analyze the roots of the disparities in combat death rates. Speaking to ARA, she asserts that behind this lies the Kremlin's desire to "minimize the political risks of this war." From her perspective, Putin wants to prevent casualties from occurring in large, "politically active" cities or in areas considered "politically dangerous," such as the North Caucasus. Viushkova states that the Russian government "has learned the lesson of the Chechen wars" and wants to avoid violent outbreaks in the region or, once a ceasefire is in place, the secret return of armed men. It is no coincidence, then, that despite the territories being quite poor, the mortality rates among their volunteers are very low.

The Invisible Russia

The scholar points out that the Kremlin has shifted "the burden of death" onto "invisible" Russia. That is, onto prisoners, migrants, the homeless, the poor in remote regions, and ethnic minorities—social groups that "don't matter to anyone" and who are drawn into fighting "out of desperation." Viushkova denounces the enormous pressure the state exerts on all of them to join the army. She cites as examples people who commit minor offenses and are threatened with disproportionate punishments if they don't enlist, or migrants detained in immigration centers who are neither deported nor released until they sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense. Regarding ethnic minorities, she denies that there is an official policy of recruiting their members, but she does denounce that they are "highly disadvantaged" and "very vulnerable." The criminalization of their traditional way of life—imprisonment for poaching or hunting—extreme poverty, unemployment, and alcoholism are factors that drive these communities toward the often forced choice of going to the front lines. In these depressed areas, far removed from the political center, the discontent becomes more evident. "Sometimes, in the obituaries of Buryat soldiers posted on social media, you can observe a very interesting trend: people are expressing satisfaction with the Russian military leadership more often than before," Viushkova points out.

Threat of extinction

They also feel threatened by extinction. "We are worried about our survival as a nation," says the scientist, who estimates the Buryat ethnic group numbers 450,000. Even more critical is the situation of the indigenous communities in northern Russia, which consist of only a few thousand individuals and have alarming mortality rates. "Every person counts [in these tribes], and working-age men are supposed to be having children and taking care of their families, but instead, they are being killed," she asserts. "In Russia, one of the side effects of being an indigenous person and not white is that you are more likely to die in this war," Viushkova concludes. A war with class, territorial, and ethnic biases, suffered by some and ignored by many others, which has left hundreds of thousands dead in this country (nearly 180,000 confirmed, according to theBBCandMidzone, with projections of up to 325,000) and whose end is still not in sight after 1,460 days.