THERE IS NO RUSSIA:

A disproportionate share of the Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine have come from the country's minority ethnic communities, many of which are already blighted by poverty and targeted by official discrimination.

As the conflict drags on, ethnic activists hope that the colonialist overtones of Russia's brutal invasion, which has also seen economic appropriation of Ukrainian resources and summary killings of unarmed men, could fuel discontent among non-Slavic groups - and even provide the political momentum to change the current structure of the Russian Federation.

"There will be a window of opportunity, and we will use it to get maximum rights and freedoms for our republic of Bashkortostan. We will try to become a sovereign state equal to others in the global arena," said the Lithuania-based Gabbasov, who fled Russia in 2020.

Rafis Kashapov, a veteran Tatar rights activist and co-founder of the Free Idel-Ural movement that seeks independence and integration for a group of ethnic regions in central Russia, echoed Gabbasov's comments. 

"We believe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will bring about the fall of the empire," he told The Moscow Times in a telephone interview. 

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