After the Russian Federation started partly mobilizing on 21 of September, sending men (and some women who worked in medicine and the military), Russian citizens finally started to show some resistance to Putin’s government. Although that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was saying 300,000 reservists would be called up, the real numbers from Russian independent sources and Ukrainian sources are much higher, near one million.
Men started to flee from Russia in masses, and people began to fill the streets in at least 38 Russian cities, including Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
But just like always, the situation with mobilization is not the same in different regions.
For example, at the beginning of the mobilization, in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Ivanovo, Samara and other Slavic and Russian-dominance cities, men were stopped on the street and gave letters to came to military offices, and some protesters were detained by the police. Still, without any conscience for their families, Chechen human rights group Viyfond told that in Russia-occupied Chechnya, men who wanted to make international passport was literally kidnapped en-masses and sent to the front; and Chechen women who protested on the street was punished by pro-Russian Kadyrov’s government, and their sons were kidnapped too and sent to the war; also many Chechen men were forced to sign up as volunteers blackmailing that otherwise their wives, mothers and daughters would be raped.
Chechnya and the entire Northern Caucasus region show the most outrageous resistance against Putin. For example, Residents of the Babayurtovsky district of Dagestan blocked the federal highway in protest against the announced partial mobilization. They didn’t lead Russian forces to take away their man. Previously there was news about anti-war diversions and actions in Dagestan, where people started to demand not to change the government in Moscow but the independence of their region. This annoyed Kremlin so much that on 26 September, Vladimir Putin gave the order to his Chechen proxy Ramzan Kadyrov (who is famous for his human right violation and pointless brutality), to end protests in Dagestan, like Chechen political activist Anzor Maskhadov - and the son of the third president of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Anzor Maskhadov - told in his Facebook page that he sometimes uses to share some insights about the situation in Chechnya.
So, Northern Caucasus peoples faced more harsh punishment and attitude from the Russian government, and at the same time, now they showed more resistance. The reason is simple - this region is inhabited mainly by Muslim, non-Russian populations that are radicalized and stigmatized in Russian political culture. The region is a de-facto Russian colony, and Russia is using people from this region and sending them to the war in big numbers and throwing more harsh blackmail. At the same time, the word shows less sympathy toward Muslims that flew from Russia, for example, when Gorgeoia is sending away to Russia Muslim men from Nothern Caucasus, who flew from mobilization, but allowing Russian man in the same situation to stay in the country, or when Europe is giving to Russia Muslim, but not Christian or atheists refugees (about that more information below in the report), partly because the actual scale of Russian Islamophobia and racism is raised and still hidden from foreign media.
For everyone who understands this tendency and predicts where it will lead and if there will be a second front, it is essential to see the situation in the context and realize how Russia became the federation of Islamophobia.
In this report, you will find information about Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim racism in Russia and in the Russian occupied territories (in Ukraine and Nother Caucasus), and how this problem increased in the context of the Russia-Ukrainian war, including recent news of censorship, torture, distractions of the mosques and anti-Muslim propaganda in Russian media.
Also, for illustration of Islamophobic violence and discrimination, we will use as examples some of the most outrageous situations that could be memorable for Western media and their audience.
Ayman Eckford, our expert in Middle Eastern politics, terrorist studies, and gender studies, deserves special thanks for preparing the report.
