Russia claims to be fighting for its survival in Ukraine. But look closer at the casualties. The dead are overwhelmingly from ethnic minorities: Kazakhs, Buryats, Altai, Tuvans. Not ethnic Russians.

This is not an accident. This is design.

How Russia does it:

  • Engineered poverty. In the Altai Republic, 85% of the population lives below the poverty line. Life expectancy has dropped to 44 years. These regions are rich in resources, but the wealth flows to Moscow, not to the people who live there. Minorities are left with nothing.

  • No education, no future. Schools in minority regions are underfunded and substandard. Young men grow up with no skills, no prospects, no way out. The army becomes the only escape from a life of poverty.

  • Economic coercion. Military service offers a salary that a young man could never earn in his village. It offers status, respect, and a way to support his family. For many, it’s the only option.

  • Divide and rule. Russia has deliberately fractured ethnic groups – splitting the Altai into multiple smaller groups to weaken their political power. They pit minorities against each other to prevent unity. This is a strategy straight from the colonial playbook.

The result:

  • Minorities are sent to the front lines with outdated equipment, little training, and zero motivation. They are treated as expendable.
  • Ethnic Russians are kept in safer rear positions. They are the “protected” class.
  • When minorities die, Moscow barely mourns. Their names are just numbers in a telegram channel.

This is not just about war; it is a system of internal colonialism that dates back to Tsarist imperial times and has been revived under the current federation. While the Soviet era introduced policies that temporarily improved minority representation, the current regime has returned to draining peripheral lands of resources and utilizing minority youth as front-line casualties. They are not treated as equal citizens, but as expendable assets of a centralized state that denies their regions basic opportunities and self-determination.

This is the real face of Russia. Not the propaganda of “brotherhood of peoples,” but a cynical empire that uses poverty and desperation to recruit the poor and marginalized to die for the ambitions of the powerful.

Disclaimer: I have used AI to improve the flow

Resources

  • graphito@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    2 months ago

    Surprising that you signed up on .ml

    I think the main reason behind the situation is simply dependence on export of raw materials (fossil fuel/metal ore) that doesn’t require many skilled people.

    Only when margins of raw materials extraction will be squeezed out, the leadership would be incentivized to change.

    The way out is either abundance of supply(raw materials) or reduction of demand (transition to more advanced substitute i.e renewables)

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Did an LLM write this? Where did you get this from? Because it certainly isn’t how you, specifically, normally write.

    • Big Baby Thor@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      2 months ago

      This tired old gag? Let me make it clearER.

      LLMs 👏 have 👏 ripped 👏 off 👏 all 👏 the 👏 worlds 👏 literature 👏. They 👏 are 👏 LITERALLY 👏 called 👏 natural 👏 language 👏 models 👏.

      I’ve gotten this thrown “gotcha” thrown at me more than once, and I studied the romantics and the beat poets. First it was cute, but for the 100th time? Gtfo here.

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Mate, 1) it didn’t “improve the flow”, but more importantly 2) it seems like the LLM basically wrote the whole thing.