Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples in Russia to fight for their freedom and against the military mobilization that he said was disproportionately targeting them, in a speech shared online on Thursday evening.
"No one has to take part in a disgraceful war. Dagestanis do not have to die in Ukraine. Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians, Circassians and any other peoples who came under the Russian flag."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
"No one has to take part in a disgraceful war. Dagestanis do not have to die in Ukraine. Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians, Circassians and any other peoples who came under the Russian flag," said Zelensky. "In total, almost 200 different peoples... You know who sends them to Ukraine."
.@ZelenskyyUa addresses “the peoples of the Caucasus, Siberia and other indigenous peoples of Russia.Dagestanis do not have to die in a vile and disgraceful war of Russia. Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians, Circassians and any other peoples who came under the Russian flag.” 1/4 pic.twitter.com/CQ7mpFH3DU
— Dr. Olga Onuch (Онух) (@oonuch) September 29, 2022
Zelensky said that in order to make these citizens go to war, they had been driven into poverty, pushed into taking loans, intimidated by repression, and harassed by propaganda.
"Fight to avoid death!" urged the Ukrainian president. "Defend your freedom now in the streets and squares, so that later you don't have to fight in the mountains and forests simply for your right to live, when the Russian authorities start the next waves of mobilization."
Zelensky warned that almost 58,000 Russian military personnel had died in the war thus far, but the Russian government was concealing the casualties, even alleging that they were cremating soldiers with mobile crematoriums and sending soldiers without tags and documents to serve this purpose.
"This is their special operation," said Zelensky. "Special operation on lies, terror, extermination of indigenous peoples."
The Ukrainian president invoked the memory of a Dagestani hero, Imam Shamil, who had lived in Kyiv in the 1860s, to drive his point that they needed to rise up to avoid their doom in Ukraine.
"'Anyone who raises a weapon against the truth raises it to his own destruction,' the Kremlin seems not to be aware of these words by Imam Shamil," said Zelensky. "But these words should be known in the Caucasus. They should be heard in Siberia and in all other lands from which people are being sent to this war."
The Free Buryatia Foundation and similar activists working in Yakutia, an impoverished periphery region of Russia in northeastern Siberia, confirmed Zelensky's claims when they told The Washington Post last week that they were concerned that ethnic minorities and rural residents were being disproportionately targeted for drafting in the drive for 300,000 soldiers for the Russian military.
“When it comes to Buryatia, this is not a partial mobilization, this is 100% mobilization,” the head of the Free Buryatia Foundation, Alexandra Garmazhapova, reportedly said in a television interview.
Protesting against Russian mobilization
Zelensky gave special focus to the residents of Dagestan in his speech, where unrest has developed in response to Putin's Wednesday partial mobilization decree.
Videos of protests in front of recruitment centers in Dagestan have been circulating online. The head of the region, Sergei Melikov, told RIA that Ukrainian Intelligence services were instigating the "anti-state activities."
In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, one person was arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails into a recruitment center on Thursday.
However, protests haven't been limited to periphery territories. In Moscow and St. Petersberg, protestors have been punished with draft notices.
The use of ethnic minorities, who may have less personal and familial ties to Ukraine, have been utilized by the Russian military throughout the war. This has included people from South Ossetia, Tuva, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan (Bashkiria), Chuvashia, and Chechnya.
Chechens in particular have seen a great deal of combat in Ukraine, under the leadership of Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia's Republic of Chechnya. Early in the war, it was reported that Chechen special units had attempted assassination attempts on Zelensky. In March, the Ukrainian Intelligence Directorate claimed that Russia would begin recruiting Chechen convicts to help replenish forces.
Regarding the Republic of Tuva, located in Siberia, an incentive has been given by Tuva's leader Vladislav Khovalyg to give the families of reservists live sheep, coal, flour and potatoes, according to the official Republic of Tuva press center.Roman Meitav contributed to this report.