INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
minorities also sustained outsized losses
the invitation of Catherine the Great, who hoped the skilled farmers and merchants persecuted at home would help modernize the Russian
subjected to forced russification and conscription by the tsarist regime
Kazakhstan, has been documenting the new tragedy hitting his community by tracking Ukraine war losses among the roughly 195,000 Germans
about the fate of Russian Germans.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.MT: You have been counting casualties among the
Germans fighting for Russia in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion
What prompted you to do that?AT: I have dedicated my entire life to my people
Back then, we fought for the restoration of the Volga German Republic.When the full-scale war with Ukraine began, it became yet another
tragedy for our people, who are now being used [by Russia] in a confrontation with Europe.During World War II, Soviet Germans were sent to
labor camps instead of the frontlines
losses confirmed by Mediazona volunteers]out of a population of over 4 million
Meanwhile, Germans with fewer than 200,000 people left in Russia have 1,000 deaths.If we had our own region within Russia, the proportion of
mobilized: the Altai, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kemerovo, Perm, Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions
fact, more people were deported there from Ukraine than from the Volga region
just a random one, but one with well-known figures in our movement, activists and officials
Many young conscripts signed military contracts [to join the army] while undergoing compulsory military service
chance but to sign that contract.It bothers me that the Ukrainian press writes a lot about the Buryats, the Kalmyks and other ethnic
point in inciting resistance among them
actually about Russian Germans with those same surnames who were killed in Ukraine.
