Andrei, a 35-year-old developer from the "republic" of Buryatia in Russia's far east, began packing immediately after Vladimir Putin announced mass mobilization across the Russian Federation last month.
He has already watched as people from his community, a predominantly Buddhist ethnic minority, are sent en masse by Moscow to the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
By the time he got into the car and started the long drive to Mongolia, the day after the mobilization was announced, his brother's recruiting officers had already knocked on his door. One young man whom Andrej received during the ride said that 17 men from his village had already been taken away - which is a significant number for a place with only a few hundred inhabitants.
"The majority of the Russian population is not interested in the suffering of the Buryats because they think in the way "they are not like us, they are some natives". It's easier for them to accept, we are consumable goods for them", said Andrej.
Members of ethnic minorities such as Buryats are being disproportionately targeted by the mobilization announced by Putin to step up the invasion of Ukraine, community leaders said.
A much larger part of the population than originally announced was recruited, which is why officials and state television are looking for a scapegoat and forcing Putin to admit "mistakes" in mobilizing too many people.
However, members of ethnic minorities in republics ranging from Dagestan in the Caucasus to Yakutia in northeastern Siberia make up the bulk of the recruits, who are mobilized in a much more aggressive and arbitrary manner, activists said.
While sending tens of thousands of men to the front, Russia is "essentially carrying out the genocide of Buryats, Ukrainians and other peoples," said Aleksandra Garmazhapova, president of the Free Buryatia Foundation, an anti-war group.
"To conquer another territory and make it part of the empire, you use national minorities... because they are expendable," she said. "So what if 200 Buryats die?"
This behavior is rooted in the Kremlin's recent attempts during the seven-month invasion of Ukraine to maintain a sense of normalcy in Russia's big cities by targeting rural areas, which lack the resources to resist conscription, protest or flee.
The result is a greater number of victims from poor areas with large populations of ethnic minorities, often known as "national republics".
"True history is suppressed, as is language, as are all aspects of identity. Earlier, people were deprived of language and everything else. Now, Putin is simply rounding off that process with their physical destruction," said Garmazhapova
After being conquered by the Russian Empire and shaped by Joseph Stalin into some kind of states, the republics in theory enjoy special privileges such as political autonomy and the right to officially use minority languages.
However, indigenous peoples who have faced decades of discrimination, including Stalin's forced deportations of Kalmyks, Ingush and Crimean Tatars to Central Asia, are among the poorest in Russia and are often minorities in their own republics compared to ethnic Russians.
"True history has been suppressed, as well as language, as well as all aspects of identity," said Garmazhapova. “Earlier, people were denied language and everything else. Now, Putin simply completes that process with their physical destruction".
Out of a total of 6756 Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine as of September 23, according to official data, 306 were from Dagestan and 276 from Buryatia, while only 24 were from Moscow, according to data published by the independent Mediazona portal. The United States and Ukraine claim that the true number of victims is probably several times higher.
Russia needs at least 300 troops to reinforce the front line, but the mobilization has gone much further.
In Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, activists say the mobilization targets mainly the Crimean Tatars, whose history on the peninsula dates back centuries before the Russian conquest.
Crimean SOS, a Ukrainian non-governmental organization, states that in some parts of that territory, as many as 90 percent of men who have been drafted into the military are ethnic Crimean Tatars, although they represent only 13-15 percent of the total population and rarely more than 60 percent even in traditional Tatar villages. .
One Tatar activist who is now in Kiev but whose extended family is still in Crimea said that in one village 150 men were drafted into the army, nine out of ten are Tatars.
Some believe that the Crimean Tatars, who have faced systematic persecution since the annexation, are being punished for supporting Ukraine.
The activist described how two of his nephews fled from the city of Sudak to Kazakhstan in a rented bus - 51 out of a total of 53 passengers were Tatars.
A Crimean Tatar currently living on the peninsula, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the mobilization is devastating because "we are losing the most productive part of the population, people who could start families and have children have left and this will really harm our demography."
Activists from other ethnic minority regions say the aim of the disproportionate recruitment is likely to quell discontent.
"It is no longer possible to walk freely in the city. People are simply being kidnapped everywhere. There were cases where 63-year-olds and 56-year-olds were taken away," said activist Aldar Erendzhenov, 32, who left the southern republic of Kalmykia in April and is now evacuating locals to Kazakhstan by bus. "It is clear to me that they are doing this in order to hide all the young people and in that way freeze even the thought of separatism," he added.
In some areas, the mobilization caused rare outbursts of public discontent. Demonstrators in Dagestan chanted, "this is not our war," as they repeatedly clashed with police last Sunday, and women led anti-conscription demonstrations in Yakutia and Tuva.
The mobilization has drastically changed public opinion in Dagestan, said Idris Yusupov, deputy editor of the local newspaper "Novoe delo".
"When they declared mobilization, even people who supported the government realized that it would affect their loved ones. Now everyone knows what's going on. It is not surprising that people are upset, that they have started to flee and look for ways to avoid mobilization," he added.
The requests of the minorities found sympathy with Russia's neighbors. In a speech last Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged them to avoid conscription and resist the Kremlin.
The former president of Mongolia, Cahiyagin Elbegdorj, called on the Buryats, Tuvans and Kalmyks, who share a common origin and related languages, to flee to his country.
"Since the beginning of this bloody war, the ethnic minorities living in Russia have suffered the most," he said. "They use them as cannon fodder".
Over 3500 Buryats have crossed into Mongolia since the declaration of mobilization. They welcomed them there as brothers, said Andrej. He also connected with distant relatives in Mongolia, including those whose families fled Russia in the 1920s, fleeing revolution in the early days of the Soviet state.
"Now I'm joking with them: you ran away in the 20s, and now we too."
Translation: N. Bogetić
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