Is Yakutia carrying a disproportionate share of Russia's war? What activists say and what the data shows

Since Russia’s partial mobilization in September 2022, activists from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) have argued that the war falls disproportionately on their people. Some go further and speak of a threat to the Yakut nation and of “genocide.” This article sets out those claims and checks them against the available data.

What activists and local figures said

• In September 2022, about 400 people, mostly women, protested against mobilization in central Yakutsk, DW reported, citing the local outlet SakhaDay. They danced the traditional osuokhai and chanted slogans including “No to genocide” and “No to mobilization.” Radio Svoboda reported that police broke up the protest.
• Then State Duma deputy and former Yakutsk mayor Sardana Avksentyeva wrote that Yakutia had to provide 4,750 men, “1.66% of men,” and said she could not explain why the figures were disproportionate, DW reported.
• In an open letter dated 23 September 2022, Sakha Congress chairman I. Shamaev argued that if the announced 300,000 reservists were spread in proportion to population, Yakutia’s share would be about 2,000 people. He said the actual scale of the call-up “many times” exceeded that.
• Indigenous-rights groups (the Association of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of Yakutia and the NGO Cultural Survival) reported men being taken from remote northern villages, including reindeer herders and fathers of large families. Cultural Survival cites activists’ figure that 50 of 128 young men in the Olenek Evenki district were subject to mobilization.
• The Free Yakutia Foundation, an anti-war group founded in August 2022 by Sakha activists, says it organises protests against the war and mobilization. It also says it has investigated military contract recruitment and in November 2023 released leaked video from closed meetings of the republic’s government. The Moscow Times reported on that leak.

The owner of this site has raised the claim that Yakutia is mobilized “about three times” more than ethnically Russian regions. We did not find an independent dataset that confirms a 3:1 ratio. The closest figures are the ones above: Avksentyeva’s 4,750 and Shamaev’s estimate of about 2,000 for a proportional share. Both are claims made by public figures, not official statistics; Russia has not published regional mobilization numbers.

What the casualty data shows

The best independent proxy is the list of named Russian war dead compiled by Mediazona and BBC News Russian.

• They have confirmed more than 200,000 deaths. Losses fall heavily on poor, remote and largely non-Russian regions. Per 100,000 residents, Mediazona ranks Tuva (476), Buryatia (400), Zabaykalsky Krai (362) and the Altai Republic (316) highest. The BBC says rates in Moscow and St Petersburg are 25–30 times lower than in the leading regions.
• Yakutia is not among the highest-loss regions in these rankings. In a peer-reviewed 2023 study of the same data, sociologist Alexey Bessudnov found 43.0 deaths per 100,000 working-age men in Sakha, against 3.1 in Moscow — about 14 times higher. However, Sakha ranked 57th of 85 regions, below many mostly Russian regions such as Pskov, Kostroma or Bryansk.
• Bessudnov found that Buryats and Tuvans died at about four times the rate of ethnic Russians. When regional socioeconomic conditions were taken into account, ethnic gaps narrowed sharply. He concluded that poverty and recruitment in poor regions, not ethnicity as such, drive most of the disparity. He could not measure Yakuts separately, because Yakut names are usually Russian in form.

In short, the data supports the view that the war’s burden is highly unequal: men from Yakutia are far more likely to die than men from Moscow. It does not, so far, show Yakutia losing more per capita than ethnically Russian regions as a whole.

“Genocide” and the “gene pool”

The words “genocide” and a threat to the Yakut “gene pool” come from protesters and activists. They are not findings of this site. Under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, genocide requires specific acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. We are not aware of any court or international body that has ruled on such a claim regarding Yakutia.

The authorities’ position

Russia’s Defence Ministry has said there are no fixed mobilization quotas, only tasks set according to the number of people on the military register, Cultural Survival notes. In September 2022, Yakutia’s head Aisen Nikolaev acknowledged that some people had been called up who should not have been, such as men who had never served and fathers of four children. He ordered a “double filter” and the return of those mobilized by mistake. The first plane carrying 35 such men was sent back to the republic, Radio Svoboda reported.

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