The Russian army recruits by forced march in this small poor republic close to Mongolia. But revolted by the violence of the conflict, many Buryats are now seeking to leave the army. This exposes them to reprisals from Moscow.
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Oksana Plyusnina does not know what has become of her son, Ilya, an enlisted volunteer sent to Ukraine by Russia. On April 28, the young man told the military authorities that he wanted to leave the army. He explains to them that he has just had a child, that he wants to return home, to Buryatia, a small, remote and poor republic in the Russian Federation, wedged between Lake Baikal and Mongolia. They would be like him 150 Buryat soldiers to have asked for the end of their contract.
Most have since disappeared, says Oksana, sent to a provisional detention center in Lugansk, deprived of their telephones and all contact with their families. “Physical and moral pressures are exerted on those who refuse, explains Alexei Vladimir Boudaev, co-founder of the NGO Bouriatie Libre. We have been told that people are taken on board and threatened with being sent back to the front, but without anything, without equipment, without uniform, without ammunition, so that they would simply be killed without it even being known. .“
According to independent investigations of Russian deaths, the Buryats are paying the heaviest price for the war in Ukraine. In this region so poor, and where unemployment is raging, the army recruits with a vengeance, luring recruits with an attractive salary and the promise of easily obtaining a loan to buy a cheap apartment in Ulan Ude, the capital. . A method that Moscow also applies to Dagestan, another republic of the federation, in the mountainous region of the Caucasus. A pool of essential fighters for the Russian army, ready to terrorize to keep its cannon fodder.