The joint input by the International Committee of Indigenous Peoples of Russia (ICIPR), Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial-Brussels and the Institute for Ecology and Action Anthropology (INFOE).
In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, openly continuing the anti-Ukrainian aggression started back in 2014, the involvement in which the Russian authorities for a long time denied. During the eight years preceding the invasion, Russia annexed Crimea and, as a result of the hybrid war, effectively seized significant portions of the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts of Ukraine, installing unrecognised puppet republics in these regions. At the time of submission of this input, about 20% of the territory of Ukraine are under Russian occupation; They are subject to a harsh totalitarian regime and many repressive laws, which have been adopted by Russian lawmakers. All the traditional territories of the recognized Indigenous peoples of Ukraine – Crimean Tatars, Krymchaks, Karaites – have been occupied; some other territories are also affected, for instance many settlements of the North Azov Greeks have been entirely annihilated by Russian aggression.
The authors of this submission have previously informed various UN bodies about the unlawful policies of the Russian authorities towards ethnic minorities, migrants, and LGBTI+—state racism, xenophobia, and support for nationalist groups. These policies predictably culminated in open military aggression against Ukraine and failed to provoke meaningful resistance within Russian society.
In this context, the situation of the Indigenous peoples of Russia has its own specific features. On the one hand, peoples who do not belong to the Russian ethnic majority are experiencing racism and xenophobia, which in recent decades have shape the general societal climate in Russia, remain at a high level, and in recent years, according to some estimates, have been even growing further. On the other hand, Indigenous minority peoples—defined by a population of 50,000 people or less—are formally covered by special legislation, and Russian propaganda claims that the state devotes special ‘care’ towards small Indigenous peoples, although they are severely impacted by activities of extractive companies, globalization, and insufficient support measures, remaining one of the most vulnerable and impoverished groups of the Russian population. Special protective measures for Indigenous peoples are purely performative, lacking any robustness. For instance, Russia claims to observe the right to FPIC, yet Indigenous peoples in Russia neither are nor have ever been asked to give or withhold their consent prior to the granting of exploiting licenses for resources within their territories.
Further, the propaganda narrative of ‘national unity’ prohibits any discussion about the colonial nature of Russian politics in the past and present, while defense of the rights of Indigenous peoples is being criminalized. Russian authorities deny not only the existence of unresolved conflicts between colonized peoples and the state or state-affiliated businesses, but even the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine—officially, it is prohibited to refer to the situation as a ‘war’. At the same time, the peoples of Russia are deeply involved in this war, are dying in it, and are suffering from its consequences. In the present context, the term ‘conflict’ therefore encompasses both the unresolved legacy of colonial policies pursued by the Russian Empire, the USSR, and the Russian Federation, and the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, in which Indigenous peoples of Russia are heavily involved and from which they suffer disproportionately.