Wartime protest across Russia’s internal borders

First published at Posle.

Environmental disaster, over-centralization, weak local government, a lack of regional autonomy: though the war in Ukraine tends to keep Russians’ domestic political issues out of the media spotlight, they are still significant. Of the approximately 300 protest campaigns across 40 regions that took place in Russia in 2024, the majority were devoted to environmental and urban planning issues, whether fighting deforestation, new penal colonies, or landfills.

The most high-profile and potentially explosive campaigns arise when ethnic minorities’ self-determination comes into play alongside environmental concerns. This is not only because such campaigns bring together people and groups with very different priorities; it is because the various people groups within the Russian state are an extremely touchy subject for the regime. On the one hand, the authorities are obsessed with preserving the country’s “integrity.” On the other hand, they slowly but consistently undermine this integrity by dismantling local self-government and strengthening the bureaucratic/military hierarchy. Moreover, they have been pushing nationalist, imperial narratives (that there exists a transnational “Russian world,” that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people,” that the Russian language is entitled to hegemony domestically because ethnic Russians “founded” the country). As a result, for environmentalists and other social activists, the issues of ethnic minorities are both a risk factor and a bargaining chip. They can bet that the authorities do not want to aggravate the situation.

One good example of this was the 2018–20 campaign at the Shies railway station in Arkhangelsk Region, where the environmental fight against a landfill that Moscow authorities and businesses were trying to push through brought together various groups. For some, it was purely an environmental issue; for others, it was about protecting the Russian North as an ethnocultural region. Some fought to defend Indigenous heritage. Others prioritized social justice. Hence the political diversity of the protesters and their supporters, which included leftists, liberal human rights activists, anarchists, nationalists, as well as representatives of parliamentary parties and various civil movements.

This article will take a closer look at three recent campaigns to figure out how environmental and human-rights problems intersect with the issues of regional autonomy and Indigenous sovereignty.

Altai: “Citizens have a duty to defend their homeland” from the oligarchs

The Altai Republic occupies a small but strategically important territory between Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China, as well as the adjacent Tuva, Khakassia, Kemerovo, and Altai Krai regions of Russia. (The Altai Republic is separate from Altai Krai.) In June 2025, it was the scene of protests sparked by a local government reform that abolished village councils, which were the most local, immediate form of government.

This reform goes back to 2020, when, as part of the infamous presidential amendments to the Constitution, local self-government became part of a “unified system of public authority.” Soon after, in 2021, the so-called Klishas-Krasheninnikov Bill was proposed (it finally passed in 2025), letting regional authorities get rid of self-government in urban and rural areas and subsume small municipalities into districts (the rough equivalent of counties in the US). Critics called it the final nail in the coffin for local self-governance.

On June 24, 2025, the parliament of the Altai Republic adopted a single-tier system of local self-government: the ten current districts, whose heads are elected by the people, will be replaced by the same number of districts with “appointed officials,” while about a hundred village councils are to be abolished.

In response, people started holding a series of one-person protests and blocking roads with slogans like “Turchak must resign,” “No land grabs by oligarchs,” “Altai is ours,” and “Yes to two-tier government.”

The authorities retaliated with repression (activists got 13–14 days in detention or fines). Andrey Turchak, the son of one of Putin’s friends and United Russia ideologues and the Moscow-appointed head of the Republic, called the protesters vandals on his Telegram channel. He urged them “not to disturb the spirits,” because “we are fighting together for peace and prosperity in the Altai Republic while our guys on the front lines are defending the interests of great Russia.“ Meanwhile, said “guys on the front lines” recorded a message supporting the protesters: “Our homeland is being torn apart by Turchak and [acting head of government] Prokopyev.”

What is the Altai Republic so concerned about? First and foremost, its vulnerability to Moscow-based businesses, exacerbated by the new reform. Moscow businesses include Sberbank, which is building hotels and resorts for the Muscovite and regional elite, and the pharmaceutical holding company Evalar, which owns herb plantations in the foothills of the Altai Mountains. As usual, business is closely linked to the state: German Gref, the head of Sberbank, is a prominent pro-government liberal and the former Minister of Economic Development. Larisa Prokopyeva, founder of Evalar, is the mother of Altai’s acting head of government, Alexander Prokopyev. Some predict he will eventually replace Turchak.

In June 2024, a video went viral of Gref berating taxi drivers at the Gorno-Altaysk airport for parking their cars in the wrong place. (The drivers responded by complaining about the lack of modern parking facilities.) He went after their appearance, too, threatening to get them fired. “Look at you standing around in your underwear! Parked one on top of another. Who are you to... What’s your name? I’m [German] Gref. Open your mouth again, and you’ll never work here again. Got it?”

The Altai people get it. “Gref is now a stand-in for a lot of people who are investing money and trying to buy up local land. The anti-oligarch message is central for the protesters,” says Vladimir, a local resident I talked to.

According to his fellow Altai residents, Moscow businesses do not bring any benefits or new opportunities to the Republic. The reform will give corporations the opportunity to voluntarily and compulsorily buy up land plots that belong to rural settlements and had until now been managed by the village councils. This threatens to create “social apartheid, which will result in the mass transfer of land, especially along riverbanks and lakeshores, to gated resorts and vacation home communities,” says blogger and active protester Pavel Pastukhov. He believes that the locals will be cut off from water, forests, and pastures, which will create long-term social conflict and a feeling of “occupation” of their native land. And the proposed scheme of selling land without bidding will increase corruption and hurt local businesses, which are already weak.

The word “land” is often heard at protests for another reason: this year, Altai Republic lawmakers removed the phrase guaranteeing “the integrity, inalienability, and indivisibility of [the Republic’s] territory” from its constitution. There are speculations that the federal government plans to annex the Republic to the neighboring region of Altai Krai. For the Indigenous people of Altai, this would mean the loss of their national identity. The federal government had already floated the idea of merging the two regions in the 2000s, but 2006 saw a mass protest in Republic capital Gorno-Altaysk in opposition to the move, and today Moscow’s policy of merging regions is a constant subject of debate.

The authorities’ response to the first protests this summer sparked an upsurge, and the organization Kurultai of the Altai People asked to hold a rally. At first, the administration agreed to a gathering of 102 participants at a local park, but then gave in and allocated a larger venue. In total, about 4,000 people gathered — a significant number for a republic with a population of 220,000.

“We came here today because we understand that this is our people’s last stand. It’s the last stand not only of the Altai people, but of all the peoples who live in the Altai Republic, who live anywhere in Russia,” says the most prominent speaker at the rally, Aruna Arna, the “people’s leader of Altai.” She became known for her confrontation with the former head of the republic, Khorokhordin, and has been subjected to house searches, detentions, and administrative prosecutions. In April 2023, Arna was charged with “discrediting the Russian army”: she had criticized the mobilization and suggested sending the children of Russian officials to war. Last year, she was fined for a post about Putin’s body doubles and election fraud.

We are defending our opinion in a legal and lawful manner, and all they give us is a slap in the face,” Aruna continues. “A state consists of a people and a territory. If there are no people or no territory, then no state exists. If we see that our state, our Altai Republic, is being destroyed, then—according to Article 59 of the Constitution, citizens have a duty to defend their homeland—we are obeying the law. [...] We are told that the only successful policy is investment. Look around the region: has anyone become richer except for the billionaire investors who own practically everything? [...] We demand [to elect] our own officials. Not to destroy village administrations and deputies, but on the contrary, to breathe life into the villages.

You can’t take a nation’s land. [...] As Vladimir Lenin said, ‘Peace to the nations, land to the nations!’ Turchak should be here [at our protest]. It’s time for him to start respecting the people,

‍ echoes Antonina Chaptynov, widow of Valery Chaptynov, who is known as the first post-Soviet leader of the Altai Republic.

Turchak, for his part, believes that the new system saves resources and spares Altai residents from going through the bureaucratic process. “Being nice is easy — try actually doing good,” he comments on the adoption of the law that caused such outrage among residents. However, the people of Altai succeeded in preserving direct elections for district heads. And, as is often the case, partial concessions are combined with increased repression.

This Altai story brings together several characteristic plot lines: the destruction of local self-government, the aggressive expansion of large Moscow businesses, and the usual political and policing solutions that provoke resistance from residents. They fear losing their land (due to necessity or pressure); they are losing the election of village deputies and with it, a shot at influencing the authorities and simply solving everyday problems. (“Now you have to travel 50–60 kilometers for a simple piece of paper, in the absence of regular transport,” Vladimir complains.) Finally, they feel that their republic, the guarantor of the preservation of the Altai language and culture, is under threat.

Pitting the integrity of the country against the integrity of its regions; racism, contempt for the poor, and colonial arrogance; oligarchs given free rein — clearly, none of these will help maintain a huge multi-ethic federation.

Defending the Shikhans in Bashkortostan: Russian racism shoots itself in the foot

Bashkortostan is another place where protecting the environment, resisting federal overreach, and fighting big business go hand in hand with Indigenous self-determination. In 2020, protests erupted in the republic against the mining of limestone deposits at the Kushtau shikhan, a natural landmark and sacred mountain. A mass public campaign succeeded in blocking the project. In 2024, tensions escalated again following the sentencing of activist Fail Alsynov, who had spoken out at a public gathering against gold mining in the Irendyk mountain range. The protests were held under environmentalist banners, but Alsynov himself is known as the former leader of the nationalist organization Bashkort. He even dared to mention the elephant in the room: “This is not our war. No outsiders have attacked our land.” The repression against Alsynov (he was sentenced to four years in prison for “inciting interethnic hatred”) made the activist a hero of the resistance — 10,000 people gathered at a rally in his defense.

In May 2025, protests resumed in Bashkortostan. This time, residents were dissatisfied with plans to develop the Kryktytau shikhan proposed by one of the largest private companies in the country, the Russian Copper Company, represented by its subsidiary Salavatskoe. Kryktytau is a site of traditional Bashkir rituals and gatherings mentioned in the epic poem Ural-batyr. (The song “Homay” by Ufa-based band Ay Yola, which gained popularity in the Turkic world, references this place and the character from the epic.)

Protests against the destruction of the shikhan started back in 2020. The defenders of Kushtau won, getting businesses and the government to back off. But during the war, the copper company got back to work on Kryktytau. People believe that the mining plant threatens the ecosystems of local rivers and Lake Yaktykul, a natural monument.

On May 22, regular and riot police units in full combat gear arrived at the cıyın, a traditional gathering, in Abzelilovsky District, where participants planned to discuss the Kryktytau issue. Fearing a mass protest, authorities throughout the district canceled Sabantuy, the annual festival marking the end of spring planting. In June, activists were detained and subjected to “preventive conversations” with the police. As in Altai, soldiers joined the protests: they recorded a video message, but a few days later withdrew their support, claiming that they had been manipulated.

Alsynov’s supporters were driven out of the squares, but in memory of the victory at Kushtau, folk festivals are now held every year in the nearby village of Shikhany — a new tradition, the result of the struggle. But the tension has not gone away. “Russian racism is shooting itself in the foot,” says Rim Abdunasyrov, one of the heroes of the struggle for Kushtau. “We Bashkirs have our own land, and our people will defend it. At the heart of everything that happened in Kushtau is the now-corrupted word ‘patriotism.’ Not the kind where you go abroad with weapons—the kind where you defend your land and your people.”

‍“Where is Seda?”: Campaigning against domestic violence from St. Petersburg to Grozny

In these first two cases, conflicts between national-level policy and local interests occurred in regions that suffered (or rather, refused to suffer) federal government– and big-business expansionism. In the case of the “Where is Seda?” campaign, however, the action initially took place in St. Petersburg.

Seda Suleymanova had moved from Chechnya to Russia’s northern metropole in 2022, fleeing domestic violence. In St. Petersburg, Seda got a job at a bar and moved in with her boyfriend Stas. One day, she found herself fleeing through a back door from her brother, who had showed up at her workplace to demand that she return to Chechnya. Shortly afterwards, she was detained by security forces on false charges of theft and handed over to her relatives. On September 4, Mansur Soltayev, the human rights ombudsman of the Chechen Republic, published a video showing himself walking alongside the silent Suleymanova, confirming that she was alive and “safe.” Since then, no one has seen her.

One of Seda’s close friends, Lena Patyaeva, believes that she most likely became the victim of an “honor killing.” After Suleymanova went missing, Patyaeva organized the campaign “Where is Seda?”, which, although it has not yet gotten an answer to its question, has succeeded in opening a criminal investigation into her disappearance (April 2024) and, more recently, having Suleymanova being declared missing.

Patyaeva says that she started off by sending emails to state-run media outlets, but when she didn’t get any response, she decided to hold a one-person picket to “drum up media interest.”

I held my first picket on February 1, 2024. I was very scared. […] But after the picket, I didn’t receive any threats, and no one was waiting to ambush me in the stairwell. I realized that fear makes mountains out of molehills. That made it easier for me to keep going.

Patyaeva held several more pickets in St. Petersburg, but then saw that interest was waning, which meant that she was losing her opportunity to put pressure on the investigation. She then decided to hold a picket in Grozny. She carefully thought through her tactics to minimize risk and draw attention to the problem. Fearing that security forces might plant drugs on her, Lena recorded a video at Sheremetyevo Airport as proof that she passed through security and had no prohibited items or substances in her possession. Right at the start of the picket, a post appeared on the Telegram channel “Where is Seda?” in which the activist explains her actions and calls for solidarity. Security forces detained Lena an hour after the picket began, but her bet that “no one is interested in causing an interethnic scandal over a girl who didn’t burn the Koran or do anything illegal and is just fighting for her friend,” proved correct: she was soon released without charges. She successfully accomplished her goal of “attracting media attention even before her potential detention.”

A big part of the campaign was getting different political groups involved — from the Libertarian Party to Left Socialist Action — which, according to Patyaeva, “got together and found common ground.” The activists aimed to get 2,000 paper signatures in the four weeks of the campaign, but they ended up with over 5,500 paper ones and more than 2,000 electronic ones.

This isn’t about politics. […] I wish to have the broadest possible support. Even from people I would disagree with if we sat down to discuss all the other issues,” Lena admits. “Seda’s case is clear to everyone — leftists and rightists, liberals and conservatives, the opposition and those who support the government. The only ones who hate this campaign are those who support ‘honor killings,’ usually Chechen men. They send us threats, while some Chechen women, on the contrary, support me and thank me for what I am doing.

The “Where is Seda?” campaign touches on a sore spot in Russian politics. As is well-known, Chechnya has developed its own special legal system where state agents not only engage in internal extrajudicial reprisals, but also sometimes carry out raids outside the Republic (such as the murder of Boris Nemtsov or the abduction of opposition activists Magamadov and Isaev in Nizhny Novgorod). This fact is as obvious as it is impossible for the Chechen authorities to acknowledge—they insist that Chechnya still abides by shared Russian laws. The federal government, too, turns a blind eye to “honor killings” and other manifestations of the Republic’s special status.

The issue of Chechen autonomy became an existential challenge for the new Russian state in the 1990s, and, at the same time, one of the main arguments in favor of electing a secret policeman president. Today, Chechnya, with its reconstructed anachronisms and militarized cults, serves as a frightening example for the rest of Russia, and “law and order” in the North Caucasus republic remains a symbol of the successful transfer of power 25 years ago, Putin’s political achievements, and the overall viability of the Russian Federation as a post-Soviet state. The grim image of Chechnya largely stems from its closed nature: residents of the rest of the Russian Federation are not supposed to know the real mood of Chechens. All the government wants them to know (or believe) is that public discontent with Kadyrov’s regime would cost them dearly, and its fall would swiftly bring about Russia’s collapse.

So Lena Patyaeva’s tactic of crossing borders proved to be as risky as it was justified — first, when she unexpectedly arrived in Grozny to picket, then, when she visited for questioning as a witness. “The investigator from Chechnya said that I should be questioned as a witness at my place of residence, but I immediately said, ‘Let me come to you.’” The trip to Chechnya also gave her an opportunity for direct contact with locals, including police officers. “One asked why I thought her relatives had killed her. And when he found out that Seda had been living in St. Petersburg with a Russian guy, he admitted, ‘Oh, well, then they could have killed her.’”

The Chechen government doesn’t like publicity — that was Lena’s main point. “Publicity is the only leverage we have over them. When I got involved in all this, the story was already public, and it was too late to settle things privately. Right now, publicity is the only thing that turns up the heat on them and makes them uncomfortable [...] It will take [the Chechen security forces] some time sitting in their offices to decide that they are tired of all this to-do and that they need to show Seda alive or put her killers in prison, if she was killed.”

It seems that Lena’s tactics, albeit slowly, are bearing fruit: the fact that Seda was declared missing in June is a major achievement, giving a glimmer of hope to everyone who is following this difficult story.

Transcending new borders

When protest options are getting fewer, old protest structures are gone, and post-Soviet resistance traditions are broken, those who want to speak up have only a few tools left. They can reach out to Putin, get soldiers involved, collect signatures, make petitions, hold one-person pickets, organize gatherings... Almost everyone tries to act within the narrowing framework of the law, and almost everyone insists on the “apolitical” nature of their actions, which allows them to defend themselves against repression and at the same time count on the support of the politically confused majority on specific issues — such as the preservation of natural and cultural heritage in ethnic minority republics, or the rejection of customs such as “honor killings.”

However, no matter how much one distances oneself from politics, the need to create a broader framework for discussing local issues remains. Instead of competition between major political programs, which has been outlawed, we see the reinvention or creation of collective (and sometimes personal) rituals, a struggle for the interpretation of official symbols of historical memory or the wording of the Constitution. One can recall how draftees’ women relatives (in another high-profile recent campaign, The Way Home) have appropriated dates and monuments for their actions, competing with the authorities to define public memory of World War II. Turchak’s statement that the defenders of Altai self-government are “disturbing the spirits” points to a genuine disagreement: do deities, local spirits, ancestral ghosts, and figures of the fallen always stand for peace and orderliness, that is, for the current administration, or might they side with those who challenge the rich and powerful of this world?

In one interview, Lena Patyaeva, the face of the campaign “Where is Seda?”, shares how she took the time to get up to speed on the whole political landscape, and how she figured out her campaign strategy and its unique ritual framework step by step. “I made the decision to go to Chechnya on New Year’s Eve. I had a plan to do it not on any old day, but on the anniversary of the kidnapping, March 25. […] Thanks to my trip to Chechnya, people started collecting signatures. I’m sure that without the trip, things never would have happened on such a scale.” In a break with convention, seasonal holidays such as New Year’s Eve figure here not as times to rest and then return to the old order of things, but as opportunities to make an important decision and take a step forward — a personal and at the same time socially significant step, as if breaking the cycle of widespread political apathy.

An important new political ritual is defending the land, in various senses of the word: as the state salutes the defense the Russian Federation’s newly-expanded borders, it actions are perceived by many residents of Russia’s regions as an attack on their land, whether it be their privately owned plots, their protected forest and mountain areas, or the administrative borders of their minority republics that the federal authorities have their plans on.

The regime cares about the “integrity” of the territory under its control, it protects its borders—and it also violates them, depriving neighboring countries of their integrity, removing guarantees of integrity from the constitutions of its member republics, and dividing up their territories (let us recall the recent protests in Ingushetia against the transfer of part of their land to Chechnya). It creates an informal border between Chechnya and the rest of the Russian Federation — and we see that one activist’s crossing of this border has turned out to be a politically sharp move that led to partial success.

The more they talk about borders, the more important it is to figure out how to get past them, and the more important it is to think beyond borders — in how we see things, what we do, and our plans. Shies became a center of resistance largely because it was at the intersection of two regions: Arkhangelsk Region and the Komi Republic. What is happening today in Bashkortostan is supported by residents of the neighboring Chelyabinsk Region, among others, a good sign that what is happening is not limited to a Bashkir ethnic or national agenda. The Altai people have been supported by residents of other regions and states — Tyva, Sakha, Buryatia, Altai Krai, and Kyrgyzstan. Mountains, forests, rivers, and climate zones transcend borders, as do human rights; in these times of obsession with borders and sovereignty, we will all have to make new political sense of this obvious truth.

Engaged citizens from various regions of Russia are re-learning how to do politics under new conditions. They are being forced to forge new connections across barriers erected by the authorities and to take state-supported rituals and re-code them. Is it possible to create a political space in which the struggle for land against federal officials and corporations becomes a common front, and outdated patriarchal traditions cease to be a means of terrorizing, dividing, and paralyzing society? Maybe, but it will require not only that local activists display courage and ingenuity, but that they receive non-dogmatic attention, support, and solidarity — from across all kinds of borders.