Putin using indigenous people 2,000 miles from Ukraine to feed his war machine

Some of the last members of Russia’s threatened indigenous peoples are dying on the battlefields in Ukraine.

Thousands of men being fed into Vladimir Putin’s war machine are failing to return home alive, according to human rights defenders.  

Recruits from a reindeer herding community around 2,000 miles from the frontline are among those who have been conscripted or promised large payments to join the military.

One representative of the indigenous peoples warned that they are facing a ‘generational’ crisis due to the ‘dramatic’ numbers who are dying in the all-out invasion of Ukraine.  

The fate of those being mobilised, who are mainly drawn from the north, Siberia and far east, was revealed this week by the testimony of a 19-year-old soldier taken prisoner by Ukraine. 

The injured man, whose Nenets people traditionally herd reindeer in the remote Yamal Peninsula, surrendered after special forces troops threw grenades into a shattered basement where he and two comrades had taken cover. 

The teenager, whose name is given as Dmitry Yaptik, says ‘the Nenets population…is dying out’ and others in the community who were mobilised with him had all died.  

Dmitry Berezhkov, editor-in-chief of the Indigenous Russia website told Metro he has lost people close to him after they left to fight in Ukraine.  

‘The casualties are having a tragic impact on the entire population of the indigenous people in Russia, which will continue for many generations to come,’ he said.

‘For example, in my own nation, the Itelmen nation, we have only a population of around 2,200 people so even several people dying in this war is a huge loss for us, especially in the northern villages.  

‘My cousin has disappeared in the war and a friend I knew for decades has been killed. Every indigenous family has been impacted by the war, in one way or another.’ 

Men from the Yamalo-Nenets and Komi regions were enlisted under Putin’s so-called partial mobilisation in September 2022, which the Kremlin said only applied to people with previous military experience.

At the time, indigenous people of different ages and ethnic backgrounds were shown in photos shared by the Yamal-Nenets regional government as they gathered at a health centre preparing to travel to training camps.  

The International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia, to which Mr Berezhkov belongs, appealed to those in line for mobilisation to ‘continue the traditions of their ancestors’ and not to perish ‘at the behest of Putin.’  

The organisation described the people, who belong to around 50 groups, as hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders.

Their rugged attributes have led to them being sent to the hottest parts of the front, with the resulting attrition rate being so high that Indigenous Russia has warned that ‘representatives of peoples who are already on the verge of extinction are dying.’ 

The Nenets, who live in the Siberian Arctic, have been used as little more than cannon fodder according to multiple accounts.  

One member who has not returned is Andrey Laptander, 36, who is said to have been recruited from prison and to have died during the Russian capture of Bakhmut in 2023.

‘The Nenets already know how to hunt, fish, handle weapons and generally survive in the outdoors, so they are used in the more dangerous places on the front,’ Mr Berezhkov said. 

‘They are also met with uncaring commanders who view troops they think do not look like Russians as expendable and send them out on attacks.’ 

The deployment of indigenous people to the frontline has continued outside of the Russia-wide mobilisations, Mr Berezhkov told Metro.

Exact figures are hard to come by, not least because Moscow has designated the committee and other activists and human rights defenders representing indigenous people as ‘extremist’ organisations. 

The United Nations has said the peoples are one of the federation’s ‘most marginalised and vulnerable population groups’ and described the outlawing of their representatives as persecution. 

Mr Berezhkov has taken political asylum in Norway, where he lives in Tromso, in common with other advocates of indigenous peoples forced to live in exile outside of Russia. 

Yana Tannagasheva, a member of the Shor people, has described Russia as an ‘aggressive coloniser’ that is using the ethnic groups to further its war aims and enrich itself from natural resources on land where they have lived since ancient times.

‘Most of the Nenets people from Yamal are going to war through voluntary contracts and from jails,’ Mr Berezhkov said.

‘It’s hard to gather statistics because of state secrecy and pressure from the Russian government, which unfortunately stipulates us as a terrorist organisation, so it’s a crime for people to help us when we try to gather data.  

‘We understand that the rate of casualties among the Nenets and other indigenous people is much higher than among other local populations in Russia.  

‘Yamal might be wealthier than some other regions in the federation due to oil and gas extraction, but many of the people there are poorer than in other populations and they go to war in a much higher percentage.’ 

The Nenets soldier speaking about his people’s fate in the video recorded by the Azov 12th Special Forces Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine is among a generation the community can ill afford to lose.

In the footage, which the formation says he took part in voluntarily, the mortar operator tells the camera he is from Seyakha village, which lies on the Kara Sea in Russia’s northernmost reaches.

Yaptik describes being sent to storm Shcherbinka, a village in the eastern Donetsk region, before taking cover in a house after the armoured vehicle he was travelling in was blown up and the detachment was targeted by mortar fire and drones.

His story is far from unique, according to Mr Berezhkov. 

‘From open source information, we can see that the Nenets and other indigenous people from the Yamal region have been killed in dramatic numbers,’ he said.  

‘We think there might be several thousand who have been killed since 2022, when the official size of the Nenets population was just under 50,000 people. One reason why the Nenets have such higher losses compared to the other populations is because their surnames are unique. 

‘In some cases we can see more than one member of the same family has died on the same day and their bodies have been returned to Yamal on the same day.’ 

Russia suffered more than 648,000 personnel killed or wounded since the start of the war in February 2022 up to October last year, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

Perhaps as a lever to continue mobilisation after the zinc coffins began returning to the home regions, some indigenous people are being offered relatively large sums of money to volunteer.

‘Among indigenous people, and especially the reindeer herders, the general level of education and access to information sources outside the state propaganda machine is low,’ Mr Berezhkov said.

‘They go to fight for their homeland, with no understanding that it’s not a rightful war.

‘There have also been cases where indigenous people have been given huge fines for illegal fishing, which is another issue affecting their rights, as they have had to become poachers to survive, and they have gone to war to cover this fine. 

‘In Yamal we know they have been offered between 150,000 and 300,000 rubles a month in military pay, as well as money for signing on and if they die. It’s huge money for Indigenous people.’  

At least one promise of lucrative remuneration has evaporated with horrific consequences, according to Mr Berezhkov 

‘There’s corruption right the way through the Russian military chain and there is one story where two indigenous people who didn’t agree to receive much less money than they’d be promised tried to return home,’ he said.

‘They disappeared, they were tortured and finally their bodies were returned home. No one knows how they were killed, whether it was by Ukraine or their own commanders.’ 

A member of the Yupik Eskimo people who claimed asylum in the US after leaving her homeland in Arctic Russia spoke of an existential crisis.  

‘There are three Eskimo villages in Russia with around 1,500 of us,’ the person said. ‘About 100 native people were drafted in the first wave. I have pictures showing there were no white faces, only natives.

‘It’s devasting for a community already facing extinction.’ 

The refugee told Metro that none of the men who have been mobilised by the Kremlin have returned home alive, other than for short breaks. 

‘Every village has already buried at least up to five people,’ the person said.

‘We depend on a subsistence lifestyle, such as hunting whales and herding reindeer, and we are skilled shooters, so the men were conscripted in the first wave. Our villages are now suffering because there are no providers.’ 

The advocate, whose grandfather’s tribe was declared extinct in 1991, also highlighted an ‘invisible war’ over access to gas reserves in the Arctic between the major world powers.  

‘My people are dying off without any intervention from any side, in complete silence,’ the person said.

‘In the Ukraine war, and for much longer in the invisible war.’

The representatives spoke at a time when Donald Trump’s team is meeting with a Russian delegation in Saudi Arabia for talks about Ukraine’s future.  

For the minority groups who have paid such a high price in the war, the cost will be shouldered for decades, regardless of the outcome. 

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