When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov pledged his loyalty to the Kremlin. Kadyrov and his military commanders tried to use Chechen military ferocity as a countermeasure to the images of a Ukrainian resistance.
Kadyrov sent more Chechen men to the front last week in defiance of the Kremlin's announcement of 300,000 troops. In what was widely seen as an effort to blunt popular discontent over a military operation whose failures could no longer be masked with blustery Telegram messages, he claimed that Chechen conscription targets had been overfilled.
Discontent over the draft has spread to other parts of the world. While many protests have taken place in the northern Caucasus, there have also been demonstrations in the Siberia city of Yakutsk.
Chechnya, which shares many of its cultural attributes with Dagestan, has seen a lot of fury at the mobilize. Samuel Ramani, a Russia expert, told Yahoo News that he thinks Dagestan will be a hot spot for anti-mobilization protests. Sometimes rest can extend to other regions. The protests can move in different ways.
The first to be pushed to the front will be the poor boys from the minority regions.
It is impossible to ignore a reality that has become inescapable. While being fought on Russia's behalf, the war is devastating mostly poor families, many of them from Muslim or Turkic background.
Russia is a multinational state with a rich panoply of ethnicities, religions and cultures, even though it is dominated by population centers in the western part of the country.
A lot of Muslims are going to the army. Paul Goble told Yahoo News that they are poor. The removal of men from dispossessed areas to act as replacement forces in the Ukrainian war seemed to have little risk for the administration.
According to Goble, the Kremlin's approach to the mobilize was conducted by Russian President Vladimir Putin under a cynical premise: "How do I carry this out so that few people in Moscow and St.Petersburg get rounded up?"
The extent of the recent protests suggests that the Kremlin didn't know how it would be received. Goble told Yahoo News that it was likely to backfire. This approach is from the Soviets. They should be aware of what's going on. The people of Russia have taken to the streets, where they have often been roughed up by the police.
Instead of evenly distributing the war's most obvious hardship, military service, with its resulting risk of injury and death, especially in a military as poorly trained, prepared and led as Russia's, the Kremlin concentrated those hardship in areas with few economic prospects and deeper social despair
In the 19th century, the Islamic regions of Chechnya and Dagestan were taken over by the Russian Empire. Despite their unsuccessful attempts at independence, they would continue into modernity.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the region of Dagestan has been the hardest hit. The region on the Caspian Sea coast is close to Ukraine. Making more sacrifice for the war effort is no longer feasible. Women confronted a police officer during a protest. Our children are being taken by you. Who was the target of the attack? Russia was the target of an attack? They did not show up to us. We were attackingUkraine. Russia has attackedUkraine. The woman yelled at the police officer.
More than 100 people have been arrested in Makhachkala, the Dagestani capital, but even the prospect of rough treatment by local law enforcement authorities isn't comparable to being ordered to the front. Two weeks ago, Putin announced that he was going to mobilize.
Keeping these rugged republics as part of Russia is a reminder to other ethnic minorities to put their own dreams aside. Chechnya suffered the fate that it did in the 1990s when its attempts at independence were brutally suppressed by the Kremlin.
The first war was launched by Boris Yeltsin and ended in Grozny. In 1999, Putin, then Russia's new and untested prime minister, blamed a series of devastating apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities on Chechens, though compelling evidence shows that Russia's own security services were behind the attacks.
The second Chechen war was won by leveling Grozny because of the bombings. After the assassination of their father, the Kadyrov family kept the peace with their own brand of ruthlessness. After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Putin argued that his campaign against Chechnya was not different from the one launched by Bush.
The war in Ukraine seems to have brought about a shift that has been accelerated by Putin. Other Chechens went to fight on the side of the Ukrainians even as Kadyrov pledged his own forces.
One Chechen fighting for Ukraine said that Russia ruined everything he had.
With its ferocious defense against the Russian invasion,Ukraine appears to have jostled long-dormant ambitions across Russia, as well as in independent former Soviet republics that reside in the Kremlin's shadow.
The war aims of the Kremlin have been changed, from regime change in Kyiv to holding onto the eastern and southern parts of Russia. The last seven months of conflict have shown the weaknesses in Russia's political and military leadership.
Goble stated that the Ukrainians are proving something that everyone thought was impossible. Someone could stand up to the Russians and fight to a draw.
The protesters are not fighting the Russians. They made it clear that they don't want to fight in the Russian army against the Ukrainians.
Young men desperate to avoid serving in Ukraine have been streaming into other countries. Escape is not available to a lot of people. An estimated 25,000 Russian lives have been lost in a war that has lasted longer than the Kremlin intended. The lack of a clear objective is especially pronounced for young men and their families.
The woman shouted at the authorities that the children were not being given the correct nutrition.
Zelensky has been courting this discontent. He stood before a monument to a Dagestani warrior who fought against the Russians in the war. Zelensky named other ethnic minorities who were being asked to sacrifice for Russia. Chechnya, Ingushetians, Ossetians, and any other people who found themselves under the Russian flag. There are almost 200 people. Who is sending them to Ukraine?
The residents of Moscow and St. Pete protested when Russia invaded Ukraine. The heart of the resistance is hundreds of miles away from those places of power and wealth.
There are seemingly irresolvable contradictions within a multiethnic society where national identity is less important than Moscow's.
Kadyrov and his followers have consciously burnished the image of Chechens as hardscrabble fighters unafraid of either meting out death to the enemy or dying in battle. In some ways, Kadyrov is the modern-day version of the larger-than-life warlords depicted in the fiction of writers, as well as more recent depictions of the north Caucasus.
Kadyrov has been taking to Telegram, a social media platform popular in Russia, to boast of upcoming battlefield conquests, raising fears that the kind of brutality that once marked the fighting in Chechnya would also inform Russia's conduct inUkraine.
The wild frontier is where Russians were raised on the 19th century literary classics. It is what Sicily is to the Italians and what Scotland was once to the English. The Russian perception is based on myths, prejudice and Orientalism, but it is still powerful.
It is clear to the rest of Russia that ordinary Chechens are not willing to obey Putin. Kadyrov said Chechnya had fulfilled 25% of its commitment to serve in the Ukrainian army. It was clear that the figure was a signal to back off.
If one of the war's most vociferous and aggressive advocates feels the need to refuse to mobilize his people is a worrisome indicator for the Kremlin.
It is clear that a movement has been reawakened after shows of defiance in Chechnya and other places.
The borders of the Russian Federation are not expected to be where they are in 10 years, according to Russia expert Goble.
The cover photo was taken by Gavriil Grigorov.
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