Russia is committing genocide against the Yakut and Buryat peoples on racial and ethnic grounds
Editorial — Sardaana News: Russia's war disproportionately kills men from Buryatia and Yakutia, and the editorial board calls this genocide. This is the board's opinion, not a court finding; the data and counter-arguments are set out below.
Editorial — Sardaana News. This is an opinion piece, not a news report. Author: Sardaana News Editorial Board.
The editorial board holds that Russia is committing genocide against the Yakut and Buryat peoples. The war in Ukraine is being paid for with the lives of men from the ethnic republics of Siberia and the Far East, out of all proportion to their numbers. Moscow and St Petersburg barely feel those losses.
The numbers
- According to Mediazona and BBC News Russian, the highest death tolls per 100,000 residents are in Tuva (476) and Buryatia (400), followed by Zabaykalsky Krai (362) and the Altai Republic (316).
- The BBC says rates in Moscow and St Petersburg are 25–30 times lower than in the leading regions.
- For Yakutia, Alexey Bessudnov’s 2023 study found 43.0 deaths per 100,000 working-age men, against 3.1 in Moscow — about 14 times higher. He also found that Buryats and Tuvans died at about four times the rate of ethnic Russians.
- In 2022, former Yakutsk mayor Sardana Avksentyeva wrote that Yakutia was required to provide 4,750 men — “1.66% of men” (DW).
- According to activists cited by Cultural Survival, 50 of 128 young men in the Olenek Evenki district were subject to mobilization.
- In September 2022, women in Yakutsk protested under the slogan “No to genocide” (DW).
Objections — and our reply
We owe readers the counter-arguments. The 1948 UN Convention defines genocide by the intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part. No court has ruled that genocide is being committed against Yakuts or Buryats. Bessudnov concluded that the ethnic gap is largely explained by regional poverty rather than ethnicity as such. Russia’s Defence Ministry has said there are no fixed mobilization quotas.
The board nonetheless calls it genocide. The state has known for years who is dying in this war, and it has not changed course. It keeps recruiting precisely where people are poorest and where Indigenous peoples live. We regard keeping such a system in place as intent, not accident. For small nations, losing thousands of young men threatens their very future. This is our judgement, not a fact established by a court.
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