Paul Goble
Staunton, June 9 – Russian
commanders have tried without success to confiscate smartphones from their
subordinates because the latter are not only getting news from home but sending
video clips back home not only to keep their families up to date but also to
put take pressure on officials at all levels.
The soldiers protest about all the
issues that agitate their families and friends at home and often appear in
military fatigues with guns, implicitly or not so implicitly threatening to use
force on their return to force officials to act. Because they are soldiers,
commanders are reluctant to punish them; and officials at home are more likely
to make concessions to them.
Aleksandr Leonidovich, a journalist
for Novaya Gazeta, says that such protests by soldiers in Putin’s
invasion force are one of the last places where Russians can protest with the
expectation that they won’t be punished for their effort and may even succeed
in achieving their goals (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/06/07/urbanisty-s-avtomatami).
He provides numerous examples of
what the soldiers have protested, where they are from, and how successful they
have been. But one event he recounts should shake the Kremlin even if it does
not appear to have succeed, given that a Bashkortostan protest by soldiers from
there generated a counterprotest by other soldiers.
The full text of Leonidov’s coverage
of this event is below:
“In Bashkortostan,
environmental protests are closely intertwined with national ones. In January
2024, clashes between citizens and the police occurred in the region, caused by
the trial of local oppositionist and environmentalist Fail Alsynov. The "Baimak
case" appeared, under which 82 people were subjected to criminal
prosecution.
“On January 17, the
second day of protests in the Bashkir city of Baymak, a video appeared on
YouTube: a group of masked men with machine guns, the letter "Z"
carved into the butt of one of them, read a text in Bashkir in support of
Alsynov. (youtube.com/watch?v=dvR_hLPFQ3M&t=9s).
“The video is preceded
by a threat in Russian: ‘if you do not stop going against our people, our
fathers and mothers, we are leaving our positions and coming to you. If you
want war, you will get it!"
“On the same day, an
alternative video appeared online. A large group of armed people calling
themselves "SVO" fighters from Bashkortostan fires machine
guns into the air and delivers a speech condemning "extremists from banned
organizations who are intoxicating, deceiving our residents and trying to get
them to rally" in support of Alsynov. The armed men offer to send Bashkir
nationalists to their unit so that they can "re-educate them and teach
them to love their homeland."
“The head of the Committee of the Bashkir National
Movement Abroad, Ruslan Gabbasov, told Novaya Gazeta
Evropa that the Bashkortostan authorities are not panicking from the demands
and even threats of armed men. On the contrary, in some cases they are being
forced to publicly apologize.
“’Just recently there was a similar story. Now in the
Abzelilovsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan there are unrests of
local residents regarding the upcoming development of the Kyrktytau ridge and
the construction of a mining and processing plant there. Fighters from this
district, fighting in the "SVO", recorded a video message asking not
to touch Kyrktytau. A few days passed and a new video message appeared where
they apologized and said that they were misled” (https://t.me/rg_bashkort/7256).