On February 3rd, the non-profit All-Tatar Public Center’s chairman Farit Zakiyev began a hunger strike after Russian prosecutors labeled his cultural organization as extremist. On February 9th, a Russian court in Tatarstan’s city of Naberezhnye Chelny charged the Tatar writer and activist, Fauzia Bairamova, with inciting secession in a speech and ordered her to pay a fine of 30,000 rubles, or 400 dollars. Ms. Bairamova said her speech, written in Tatar, was mistranslated into Russian and pled not guilty. These actions are the Kremlin’s latest attacks on Tatar, and minority rights in Russia. 

Tatarstan, with its complex imperial history and, presents a special interest for Russian authorities. Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital, was the last seat of the Golden Horde which ruled Russia from the 13^th to 15^th centuries. Prosperous in the latter days of the Russian Empire, the Soviets sought to dilute their autonomy by drawing borders of making Tatars a minority in their eponymous republic. The Tatars, numbering 5.3 million (four percent of the Russian population) and the second largest ethnic group in Russia today, only gained a majority in Tatarstan in 2002. 

However, the Tatars were able to gain significant autonomy during the breakup of the Soviet Union when Moscow held a significantly weaker hand than it does today. At the time, a referendum revealed 61.4 percent of the population agreed Tatarstan was a sovereign state. While Chechnya chose secession and war, Tatarstan opted for greater autonomy within the new Russian Federation by signing a treaty with Moscow in 1994. The result was the Tatar Republic within the Russian Federation, which had jurisdiction over management of its natural resources, tax collection, judiciary, and even foreign economic relations. 

The power dynamic shifted when Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power. In 2002, President Putin signed a law enforcing the usage of the Cyrillic over the Latin alphabet (Tatarstan switched to the Latin script in 1999). While Kremlin renewed the 1994 treaty in 2005, Moscow also eliminated Tatar laws that contradicted federal law, and the ethnic composition of the Tatarstan legislature was changed at the expense of the Tatars. 

After the treaty renewal, President Putin continued to promote Russian culture over local ethnicities. In 2008, the Duma required high school exams to be conducted in Russian, leading to minority languages, like Tatar, being replaced by Russian as the language of instruction. In 2017, President Putin let lapse the treaty between Moscow and Kazan. This coincided with his declaration that it is “unacceptable to force a man to learn a language not his own,” or rather, to make a Russian learn a minority language. While previously ethnic mandated education to be conducted in the local language, the Russian federal government started pressuring local governments to abolish the local language requirements in the ethnic republics.

In October 2017, government prosecutors investigated Tatar schools to see if compulsory Tatar lessons had indeed been abolished. Prior to this, Tatar law required schools to teach in Tatar for six hours a week. The government followed the assault in February 2020, when they ordered school officials to halve the hours of optional lessons in Tatar from four hours a week to two. 

Religion may now be the last bastion of Tatar culture. Mosques have begun teaching courses on Tatar language and culture, even switching their services from Russian to Tatar. Kamil Samigullin, the Chief Mufti of Tatarstan, noted that while religion is indeed separate from the state, it is tied to the soul of the Tatar people. 

This synergy of Tatar culture and Islam is not new. In the 19^th century, the Volga Tatars entered a cultural renaissance in which the elites embraced a trade-oriented version of Islam, creating a merchant class and intellectual movement similar to the Jewish Bund. The Tsars even sent these merchants out to the empire’s Muslim provinces to spread their interpretation of Islam. With this history, it is reasonable to expect a peaceful interaction between culture and faith in Tatarstan.

Moscow’s attack on ethnic minorities has been seen before; it has attempted forcible assimilation for centuries, stopping when it met local resistance. And the further centralization of the Russian center over the ethnic others by Putin fits with his psychology, given his fear of another fragmentation along ethnic lines like that of the Soviet Union. However, the center will only find instability, not security, if it continues pushing russification on Tatarstan and the other ethnic territories.  

Image Source: TSAR Voyages

Europe’s frozen conflicts have two common factors: they are sustained by Russia and fall within the greater Black Sea region. The frozen conflicts’ nominal purpose is to prevent the countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova – from pursuing policies that would distance them from Moscow. Beyond this, Russia uses the conflicts to destabilize the Black Sea; and by exerting stress on the Black Sea, Russia can threaten the Balkan states, the European Union through Bulgaria and Romania. Additionally, Russia can challenge the United States by pressuring the NATO members on the Black Sea littoral. More importantly, the frozen conflicts themselves and their impact on the Black Sea assists Russia in its own self-definition as a Great Power. 

Russia’s encroachment on the Black Sea littoral began in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War when Russia gained control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia’s Black Sea advance reached its apogee in 2014 when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, placing Russian forces in the heart of the Black Sea. While Russia has reinserted itself into the Black Sea, its naval capabilities remain limited. Following the Soviet collapse in 1991, Russia received a truncated Black Sea Navy.

The navy was largely neglected for the next 25 years until Moscow prioritized revitalizing the Black Sea Fleet in the State Armaments Program for 2011-2020 following its poor performance in the Russo-Georgian War, receiving six new diesel attack submarines, three frigates, and other smaller surface vessels (with delays). This has continued for the State Armaments Program for 2027, which calls for five corvettes and up to 12 small missile-ships. 

Crimea is key to Russia’s Black Sea security framework and its A2/AD systems. While Russia no longer possesses the means to effectively control the Black Sea, the Crimean annexation allowed Russia to cover the entirety of the Black Sea with A2/AD systems. Russia placed its Bastion and Bal coastal missile defense systems in Crimea, with the Bastion system able to hit targets in the Dardanelles Strait and in Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Turkish ports. Additionally, Russia has deployed nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 Backfire bombers capable of reaching all of Western Europe with their cruise missiles. 

The seizure of Crimea also enabled Russia to turn the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake. Following the annexation, Russia built a bridge across the Kerch Strait at a height preventing Ukrainian commercial ships from passing through to the Black Sea. Beyond this, Russia has harassed and captured Ukrainian navy ships operating in Ukrainian waters in the Kerch Strait. This fits Russia’s strategy of using the frozen conflicts to pressure Ukraine and create instability in the Black Sea – in 2017, GRU operatives were found to be recruiting fighters from the Moldovan region of Gagauzia to fight in the Donbas.

The other Black Sea states have not sat idly while Russia bolsters its position. Romania, once an allied fleet to the USSR, is a leading voice prioritizing the Black Sea within NATO; its recent 2020 national security strategy focusing on Black Sea stability. Romania has called for naval exercises in the Black Sea and purchased seven Patriot missile defense systems in 2017, and bought an additional three in 2018. The United States has established an air base in Romania, with Deveselu hosting an Aegis Ashore Ballistic Defense system. 

Turkey has started to actively support Ukraine. In a February 2020 visit to Ukraine, Turkish President Erdogan declared that Turkey would not and does not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea. Additionally, Turkey would assist in funding Ukraine’s military to the tune of 33.4 million U.S. dollars. Turkey has also sold to Ukraine its Bayraktar TB2 unmanned armed drones – Azerbaijan used these drones, in conjunction with Israeli Harop suicide drones, to destroy Russian-made Armenian tanks, trucks, artillery, and S-300 SAM systems. In 2019, Ukraine purchased six Bayraktars and announced in September 2020 its decision to purchase an additional 48 for use in the Donbas. 

Russia has used the frozen conflicts in Ukraine, Moldova, and in the South Caucasus to sow instability and expand its power in the Black Sea region. The frozen conflicts are not just Russian violations of the norms of state sovereignty but constitute security threats against the European Union and NATO. While the United States has deployed navy vessels into the Black Sea, cooperation with local partners is necessary. The United States should work Romania in its efforts to integrate Moldova into the European Union, while assisting Romania in developing hard power capabilities in the Black Sea. Similarly, the United States should work with Turkey in providing Ukraine the assistance it needs to continue standing against Russian aggression.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office announced on January 28 that Ukraine has begun a criminal investigation into attempts to interfere with the American 2020 presidential election. The announcement comes following the State Department’s January 11 sanctions on Ukrainian individuals and organizations; among them Ukrainian Parliamentarian (and member of President Zelensky’s ruling Servant of the People Party) Oleksandr Dubinsky. The targeted individuals and organizations were sanctioned for their roles in interfering with the 2020 U.S. presidential election, especially in attempting to find or create compromising material, kompromat, on Hunter Biden, son of President Biden. While Mr. Dubinsky denies wrongdoing, the Servant of the People Party voted on February 2 to expel Mr. Dubinsky from its ranks.

The investigation launched by Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation is the latest chapter of Russia’s disinformation campaign against the United States and Europe; a saga in which Ukraine features prominently. The narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, is responsible for the disinformation campaign and election interference is itself a goal of Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy. 

Former senior White House official Dr. Fiona Hill testified to this in November 2019 during the House Impeachment hearings. The U.S. intelligence community has largely agreed with Dr. Hill’s assessment, stating that Russia has engaged in a years-long attempt to frame Ukraine for its hacking of the 2016 elections and subsequent disinformation and election interference. This strategy of falsely accusing other groups and countries of doing what it itself had done fits within Russia’s history, dating from the earliest days of the Soviet Union. 

While Russia is the primary disinformation peddler, Ukrainians too have been involved in the disinformation campaigns against the West. But those who did, like the Ukrainian-born oligarch Oleg Deripaska, almost always have close ties to Russian President Putin and the Kremlin. Beyond Mr. Deripaska (who held close ties with Paul Manafort) and Mr. Dubinsky, the other major Ukrainian figure involved in U.S. election interference is Andrii Derkach, a close associate of Rudy Giuliani. In September 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Mr. Derkach for attempting to interfere with the 2020 election, describing him as a decade-long Russian agent within Ukraine. Like Mr. Dubinsky, Mr. Derkach also attempted to find kompromat on Hunter Biden.

The majority of Russian social and regular media disinformation comes from Russia in the guise of Moscow-based think tanks such as Katehon and news organizations like RT and Tass. However, Russia has used the conflicts it created in Ukraine to create additional fake news proxies. Among the most prominent organizations was News Front, which according to the U.S. State Department is a Crimea-based disinformation outlet that had ties to the Kremlin and Russian security services. The organization was registered with Roskomnadzor (Russia’s governmental body that oversees mass media) in June 2015. Operating with multiple languages, the organization trafficked disinformation and conspiracy theories ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic being a U.S. bioweapon to Ukraine becoming a colony of the International Monetary Fund. Due to widespread disinformation practices, Twitter banned the organization’s accounts and Facebook took down all but three of its pages. 

Russia only gains from U.S. officials and Western populations seeing Ukraine as the source of the disinformation campaign. The most obvious benefit is that the blame is deflected from Russia onto Ukraine, with Kyiv appearing at best as unable to control nefarious oligarchic forces within its borders and at worst as an enemy of the West. 

Another benefit is cultural. President Putin and other Russian nationalists have long argued that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian (or, for that matter, Belarusian) people distinct from the Russian nation. For the Russian nationalists both in and out of the Russian government, Ukraine belongs to the ‘Russian World.’ From the Kremlin towers, they see the dispute with Kyiv as a domestic, not an international, matter. By clothing Russian disinformation in Ukrainian garb, Moscow subtly influences Western audiences into believing this ‘Russian World’ narrative, where Ukraine aligns with Moscow, instead of pursuing a path towards Euro-Atlantic integration. 

As Kyiv investigates Ukrainian sources of interference in the U.S. 2020 presidential election, it is important to guard against Russian attempts to use this investigation to deflect blame. But even more importantly, the United States needs to bolster its own defenses against misinformation and resecure the election process.

Image Source: NBC News