Last weekend I received an email sent by a man who hails from Buryatia, a far-flung region of Russia that sits next to Siberia’s Lake Baikal, some 3,000 miles from Moscow.
Zhargal (I’ve withheld his surname) explained how he had fled the country to avoid being conscripted after president Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation of 300,000 reservists to bolster his forces in Ukraine. Minority groups such as the Buryats were, Zhargal wrote, being used as cannon fodder in Russia’s war and being mobilised at a dramatically higher rate than in Moscow.
Reports estimate that more than 3,000 residents of the region were conscripted on the first night alone. “I want to scream. I want to speak about real genocide of my [Buryat] people,” he wrote. “From my hometown… they drag people from houses giving them 15 minutes’ preparation.”