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The Muslims of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan Top the Lists of Those Killed in the Special Military Operation
News:
On 19 June, News agency Radio Liberty published an extract from a conversation between Putin and the head of the Republic of Tatarstan: “Around 54,500 people from Tatarstan have been deployed to the war against Ukraine, either as contract soldiers or through mobilisation,” said Rustam Minnikhanov. Tatarstan ranks second (after Bashkortostan) in terms of the number of confirmed fatalities in the war against Ukraine.
Rustam Minnikhanov, the Head of Tatarstan, stated during a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Kazan that more than 56,000 people had left the republic to fight in the war against Ukraine. Minnikhanov also added that more than 91 billion roubles had been allocated to support the ‘special military operation’. The transcript of the conversation has been published on the Kremlin’s website”.
Comment:
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan have the largest populations of any republics in the Russian Federation, with over 4 million people in each. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Muslims of these regions have been fighting for their independence from the Kremlin, but this struggle has never been successful.
Today, the Muslims of these lands, held hostage by the Kremlin’s disbelieving regime, are once again being used as a tool to further the aims of others and are sacrificing the lives of their sons. Tatarstan and Bashkortostan top the list of republics that have sent soldiers to the Special Military Operation. According to figures from “Idel.Realii”, more than 9,000 natives of Tatarstan have been killed on the front lines, and more than 10,000 from Bashkortostan.
The authorities in the republics are already discussing the demographic problem; the population is declining rapidly. Experts are predicting complications once the special military operation has ended. As a rule, those returning from war include the wounded, the disabled and those with mental health issues, for whom it is very difficult to find their place in society. This heavy burden will fall on the state, which is already economically weakened by the budgetary costs of the war.
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are among the top five Russian republics in terms of natural resources. Tatarstan is one of Russia’s leading oil-producing regions and also has reserves of natural gas and construction materials. Bashkortostan is rich in oil, natural gas, copper ore, limestone and other minerals. Yet all these resources – both human and natural – are taken by Moscow.
There are always those amongst the people who are driven by a desire and determination to fight for independence and liberation from subjugation to the Kremlin. This active section of society, waging the struggle for liberation, generally operates under the control of the material and political spheres of the very system against which it is rebelling. Most importantly, these activists remain hostages to an ideological trap.
The Muslims of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, like Muslims throughout the world, remain subject to disbelieving colonisers who have imposed on the whole world the idea that the only path to freedom and independence for peoples is democracy, built on secularism and the separation of religion from daily life. Where people make their own laws, where people are their own masters, and where human rights are based on individual freedoms. Yet peoples live within the confines of nation states delineated by the colonisers.
And so the movements, poisoned by these ideas of secularism, nationalism and democratic values, have found themselves in a vicious circle from which there is no escape. All movements aimed at liberation, based on rules devised by disbelieving colonisers and operating within the framework of nation states, ultimately and inevitably fall into yet another form of subjugation and enslavement by this system. A clear example of this is the Muslims of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
The only right solution is to return to their roots, to their religion – Islam. Islam is a system for life, for the individual, for society and for the state. The adoption of Islam as an ideology will lead to an ideological awakening of society and, as a result, to a revival of the Islamic way of life. And only then the Muslims of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan will free themselves from the Kremlin’s control and sweep away the national borders that have been drawn by disbelieving colonisers, will come together on the basis of Islam, will find freedom and prosperity by putting Sharia into practice.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Eldar Khamzin
Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir