Uralic Centre: “We are happy to share with our readers the statement by the President of the Free Nations League (FNL) and a leader of the Buryat national movement Radjana Dugar-DePonte, which was delivered at the seminar “Russia’s Rupture and Western Policy” at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, D.C., on April 16:
My name is Radjana Dugar-DePonte, I am a co-chair of the Democratic Movement „Buryad-Mongol Erkheten” and a President of the Free Nations League. It is a great honor and privilege for me to take part in the joint event of Jamestown Foundation and the Free Nations of Post Russia Forum “Russia’s Rupture and Western Policy”.
The history of the Buryat people under Russia has been a litany of trials and losses, of lives, lands, resources, culture and language taken away by the empire, a history of enormous pressure and resilience, of persistent and continuous struggle for existence.
Throughout history, the Russian state has pursued a deliberate policy of reducing the number of non-Russian indigenous peoples in the occupied lands. Since the end of the 19th century, the Buryat demography was affected by Stolypin reform, the First and Second World Wars, the Civil War, collectivization, industrialization, the division of the Buryat-Mongolian republic in 1937, and Stalinist repressions.
Buryatia has over 700 explored deposits of various minerals, including gold, uranium, tungsten, beryllium, and molybdenum, yet it is ranked among the poorest regions in the country. Moscow takes all this wealth. I’ll give just one example. The highest quality jade deposits in Buryatia belonged to the Evenki artel “Dylacha”. In 1994, it received a license for mining in the north of Buryatia. Jade began to bring good profits to the artel, which attracted the attention of the federal authorities to it.
In 2012, Rostec, with the help of the Russian Jade Company, whose personnel consisted of FSB officials, “squeezed out” the deposits from Dylacha. In 2014, the Russian Jade Company was replaced by the Transbaikal Mining Enterprise (ZGRP), which was also connected to FSB. At the end of July 2023, a shooting incident occurred on the territory of the Ospinskoye jade deposit in the Oka region of Buryatia. In a video that appeared on the Internet on September 2, people who look like private security officers shoot at an unarmed man. Jade is also fossicked in riverbeds and valleys of the South Island in New Zealand. In the late 1990s, the New Zealand government vested ownership and guardianship of all pounamu jade to the South Island tribe of Ngāi Tahu. In Buryatia, the natives robbed by Moscow are forced to become illegal diggers on their own land, and, like 300 years ago, die at the hands of armed robbers who appropriated their natural resources.
Lake Baikal is a sacred sea for the Buryat people. It is the deepest lake in the world containing 20% of the planet’s freshwater reserves. Uncontrolled logging and pollution has brought Baikal to the brink of an environmental disaster.
Since Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, Buryatia has faced disproportionate losses in the war. Even though Buryats make up only 0.3 percent of the population of the Russian Federation, they form 2.8 percent of the official war dead, a figure that means the war is costing our future as a nation just as Putin is trying to take away the future of Ukraine.
So, what needs to be done to liberate Buryatia and help ensure its development?
Russia will disintegrate not only because we want it, but because the time has come. The process of collapse of the empire is irreversible. The victory of Ukraine is imperative not only for the sovereignty of our peoples, but also for the world security. We call on the world leaders to mobilize all efforts to ensure this victory!
Russia is functioning because the propaganda and siloviki hold it together. Wagner mutiny has shown how thin Russia’s defences are. Russian opposition leaders hoping to seize the power after the collapse of the regime, do not have a long-term political program. Once the thaw is proclaimed, the system will fall apart. This has been the pattern in the Russian history for at least 2 centuries.
The rise of “hawks” or failed anti-Putin coup would lead to preserving the current imperial system and re-escalating the war in Ukraine. This scenario may occur if the West would strive to keep Russia unified at any cost.
Another realistic scenario is the “Parade of Sovereignties” in which national republics assert their independence, fueling Russian chauvinism and eventually leading to a civil war. The uncontrolled process of collapse brings unacceptable risks of nuclear weapon proliferation and humanitarian crisis.
The only type of plan to ensure sustainable global peace is the controlled dissolution or reconstruction of post-imperial space. A series of steps is required to increase the chance of positive change in post Russia.
First, support should be given to the independence movements of the captured nations of the Russian Empire. The empowering of the Russian so called “liberal” opposition will lead only to either the scenario of consolidation of the “hawks” or the scenario of chaos. Diplomatic relations should be built with the newly independent states in advance. The neighboring and culturally related countries such as Ukraine, the Baltic States, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkey and the global leaders must be interested to take part in the reconstruction of the ex-Russian space in order to sustain their interests and expand influence.
Secondly, it is necessary to explain to Western societies that the risks of the continuation of the war and the risks of uncontrolled chaos in Russia are unacceptable, and thus the only option is the controlled reconstruction of a post-imperial space.
Thirdly, the world community should insist on key reconstruction principles based on the UN ones: denuclearization, peaceful resolution of disputes, protection of rights for all citizens, and accountability for war crimes. These principles are already included in the Freedom and Independence Charter, signed on April 6, 2024, by the members of the national liberation movements at the First Congress of the Free Nations League in Estonia. The captive nations have to be given the opportunity for self-determination and free choice of their geopolitical vector.