Protests in Russia put wartime ethnic grievances in the spotlight

The trial of a minority rights activist in Russia this week sparked one of the biggest outbreaks of social unrest in the country since the start of the war in Ukraine, highlighting the strain the conflict has placed on Russia's complex ethnic relations.

Hundreds of protesters clashed with police on Wednesday in the provincial town of Baymak, near Russia's border with Kazakhstan, after a local court sentenced an advocate of the local Bashkir ethnic minority to four years in prison. He was convicted of inciting ethnic divisions and discrediting the Russian army.

A Russian legal aid group, OVD-Info, said at least 20 people were arrested and another 20 were injured during the protest. A video published on social media, and verified by The New York Times, showed protesters throwing snowballs at a wall of police officers in riot gear; Other videos showed police leading some protesters away and demonstrators being exposed to what appeared to be tear gas.

Tensions flared in Baymak, in Russia's Bashkortostan region, on Monday after residents gathered outside the courthouse to protest the trial of activist Fail Alsynov. Mr Alsynov had called for greater cultural and economic autonomy for the predominantly Muslim Bashkir people in Russia's Ural Mountains. Mr Alsynov has also criticized Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its 2022 mobilization, which he said has disproportionately affected ethnic minorities such as the Bashkirs.

“The smartest and strongest Bashkir men are under fire,” Mr Alsynov said on social media last year: a post that contributed to his arrest. 'This is not our war. Our country has not been attacked.”

The trial of Mr Alsynov has shown how long-running ethnic grievances in Russia's provinces can quickly take on anti-war overtones, in a potentially explosive mix that the Baymak government has shown it will act decisively to prevent.

“The Kremlin fears nationalism and separatism,” Abbas Gallyamov, an exiled ethnic Bashkir and former speechwriter for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said in a written response to questions. “Putin and those around him are traumatized by the collapse of the Soviet Union and fear that Russia will repeat its fate.”

Video footage of the protests showed hundreds of security officers in full riot gear clashing with demonstrators outside the courthouse in Baymak, a city of 15,000, and local media reported that mobile data access was limited in the area.

Several social media accounts covering the protests disappeared from platforms popular in Russia this week, and Russia's public prosecutor's office in Moscow said on Wednesday it had opened a criminal case for inciting riots.

OVD-Info, the rights group, said two students from Bashkortostan's capital Ufa were arrested on Thursday, apparently in connection with Mr Alsynov's case.

The crackdown came despite efforts by protesters to emphasize that their focus was on supporting Mr Alsynov, rather than criticizing the federal government or calling for greater autonomy.

“We are the people of the Republic of Bashkortostan, a subject of the Russian Federation. We are not extremists,” said a protester from Baymak addressed in a video to Mr Putin on Monday.

The leader of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, said this in a social media post On Thursday, his office announced that his office had moved to accuse Mr. Alsynov of extremism and ban his organization, Bashkort, which had promoted the Bashkir language and culture and opposed mining in the region.

“I must protect people from any attempt to weaken inter-ethnic unity,” Khabirov said in a video on his Telegram channel.

In his public war speeches, Putin has portrayed Russia as a harmonious multi-ethnic society, united against what he sees as Western attempts to carve it into pieces. He has praised ethnic minorities for their contributions to the war, emphasizing the shared history of the country's diverse ethnic groups and a common commitment to what he calls “traditional values.”

But Putin's use of Russian imperialist rhetoric to justify the war in Ukraine has also empowered once-excluded far-right movements, leading to an outbreak of xenophobic rhetoric.

Mr Alsynov, the convicted activist, referred to the Kremlin's conflicting messages in his social media post about the war last year.

Mr. Putin, he wrote, had called for action because “in Ukraine they harass Russian people, they don't teach the Russian language,” contrasting that position with what he characterized as mistreatment of the Bashkir language in Bashkortostan.

Malachy Browne, Alina Lobzina And Oleg Matsnev research contributed.