Environmental Protests in Bashkortostan Emerging as Threat to Moscow

Executive Summary:

• For more than six years, Bashkortostan has been the site of larger and more prolonged protests and greater repression than any other region of the Russian Federation, especially since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• The protests and repression have attracted little notice because the Bashkir actions have been primarily about defending the environment rather than protesting against Kremlin policies and because ethnic Russians outnumber the Bashkirs in their own republic.
• Kremlin-ordered repression is working against Moscow because, while it has succeeded in blocking protests, it has made heroes of Bashkir leaders and forced Moscow to explore new means of fighting environmentalism lest that become politicized. 

Since 2019,  the Republic of Bashkortostan has been the site of larger and more prolonged protests than any other region of the Russian Federation, especially since Russian President Vladimir Putin began his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Those who have participated in these protests have experienced greater repression than anywhere else in the country (Window on Eurasia, August 29, 2020, May 29, 2023; Telegram/Govorit_NeMoskva, January 15, 2024; The Moscow Times, December 26, 2024). These developments have received little media attention in Moscow or the West. They have been more about defending the environment against untrammeled Russian development of the republic’s natural resource reserves than about protesting Kremlin policies, often the only kind of actions deemed worthy of attention. Bashkirs have demonstrated against Russian plans to exploit more than half a dozen different minerals over this period. Ethnic Russians outnumber the Bashkirs in their own republic—37 percent to 31 percent—making the formation of a unified national movement more difficult while encouraging cooperation among nationalities on broader issues (see EDM, May 10, 2017, January 23, 2024). Both history and a new upsurge in protests against mining in Bashkortostan this spring, however, suggest that Kremlin-ordered repression of those who have protested has become politicized. This has led to more protests focusing on repression and Moscow’s role in that, making national heroes of the leaders. Moscow has begun to take ever more steps against the growing number of environmental protests in Bashkortostan and elsewhere lest they develop as predecessors did at the end of Soviet times and directly threaten the Russian President Vladimir Putin regime (The Moscow Times, May 2). 

At the end of April, officials of Russian Copper Company announced that they had been given permission to develop mines in Bashkortostan, which it had been seeking since 2019. Bashkirs fearful of environmental contamination had long and actively opposed this mining (Kommersant, February 12, 2019; Change.org Petition, October 27, 2019; The Moscow Times, May 2). Bashkir activists has previously assumed that they had blocked this project when the company said it was dropping its plans for work in their republic, but following the copper company’s announcement, activists announced plans for a demonstration on May 3 (Mkset.ru, September 21, 2020). The arrests of some activists and the likelihood that more would be arrested prompted them to postpone the protest, giving Moscow and Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, what may look like a victory and a serious defeat for Bashkir environmentalists (Idel.Realii, April 21; Telegram/aspecty, May 1).

The postponement of the protest reflects a change in the nature of Bashkir protests from narrow environmental concerns to broader political and even nationalist hopes. This shift means Bashkir activists are using a different calculus than before. More arrests may bring more people into the streets, but they risk landing more Bashkir leaders behind bars, something with the potential to disorder what is rapidly becoming a national movement (The Moscow Times, January 18, 2024;  Window on Eurasia, January 21, 2024; From the Republics, March 21; Telegram/Govorit_NeMoskva, April 7). Consequently, Moscow and the businesses connected to it may conclude that blocking a demonstration could give them the long-term victories they seek (From the Republics, March 21; Telegram/baibulat_uzaman, April 13).

Ever since the end of the Soviet Union, some analysts have recognized that environmental activism can be the seedbed for the growth of political and even national movements in Russia (Window on Eurasia, July 6, 2024, April 6). Such concerns were exacerbated by the Shiyes trash protests in 2018–2021 and raised to the highest levels by Kremlin aide Nikolai Patrushev in 2022 who bluntly warned that environmentalism could be used by the enemies of Russia to destroy the Russian Federation just as they had done in the case of the Soviet Union three decades earlier (see EDM, January 23, November 14, 2019; TASS, September 30, 2022). He and other Russian analysts suggested that such movements needed to be countered rather than simply suppressed, lest suppression lead precisely to the politicization of environmentalism that the West wants and would benefit from (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, April 21). Earlier this year, Putin picked up on these ideas and announced the creation of a new, well-funded program to wean environmentalists away from the West and ethnic activism in general (President of Russia, February 29, 2024; Kedr.media, March 11). He hopes that by offering such carrots and not just sticks to environmental activists, he can achieve his goals without sacrificing extensive economic development, especially in extractive industries that he has always favored.

Bashkortostan is an obvious place to apply the Kremlin’s new policies toward environmentalists. First, the republic has a long tradition of political activism that extends far beyond environmental concerns, a pattern that means environmental and ethnic activists can more easily find a common language than might be the case elsewhere (Idel.Realii, April 28). Second, Bashkortostan has an increasingly active national movement abroad that is supported by Ukraine. The diaspora fully understands the links between environmental and political issues and is prepared to offer guidance on how best to promote both (Atodangos.com, July 12, 2024; Ukrainske Radio, April 6, reposted and translated at Anti-imperial Block of Nations, April 21).  Third, Bashkortostan is geographically located in an area that has the potential to be a much greater threat to Moscow if its national movement takes off, all the more so because it enjoys the support of Bashkirs in the emigration and the Ukrainian government.

This area is what has become known as the Orenburg corridor in the ethnically Russian Orenburg oblast, which has its own serious environmental problems, such as flooding in recent times (Argumenti i Fakty Orenburg. March 26). The Orenburg corridor lies between Bashkortostan and Kazakhstan and could represent not only a land bridge between all the republics of the Middle Volga and the outside world but could also make their independence from Moscow far more likely and divide the Russian state between its European portions and those beyond the Urals. Consequently, the appearance of a strong national movement in Bashkortostan due to the growth of environmentalism could become Putin’s worst nightmare if developed, as environmental movements in Estonia and several other republics in the 1970s and 1980s did to the Soviet Union. (On the Orenburg corridor, see EDM, November 19, 2013, and January 30, 2024; for a Russian commentator’s attack on this author for having called attention to the importance of that land bridge and the problems it represents for Moscow, see Telegram/dntreadonme, April 14; Window on Eurasia, April 19).

Environmental unrest in Bashkortostan is, in reality, a growing current of dissent toward Moscow. The Kremlin’s anti-protest tactics have only amplified Bashkir leaders and created ground for further mobilization. Unless Moscow adapts its strategy, Bashkortostan may become a flashpoint of dissent with consequences that may reach beyond its borders to other areas of Russia.