Buryatia is a sparsely populated region in the Far East of Russia, sharing its southern border with Mongolia. Normally away from the spotlight, Buryatia received vast media attention in the wake of the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, when military units based in Buryatia played a significant role in the assault on Ukraine’s Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia regions; they accounted for a notable portion of Russia’s war death toll. Moreover, immediately after the de-occupation of the Kyiv region in April 2022, the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians in the city of Bucha was blamed on troops from Buryatia, attracting even more negative attention to the region and its Indigenous population. The ‘Putin’s militant Buryats’ meme, dating back to the 2015 Donbas war, took on a new, even more sinister meaning.
How much of those allegations are true?
Buryatia is indeed a heavily militarised region, with a very high number of military bases relative to its population. In that respect, it’s no different from Russia’s eastern regions sharing a border with China; the Mongolia–Buryatia border has historically been considered a ‘by-proxy’ Chinese border.
The majority of the military personnel at those bases are ethnic Russians, either from Buryatia or from other regions. The Indigenous peoples (Buryats, Evenks, and Soyots) make up less than one-third of Buryatia’s population; the rest of the residents of Buryatia are mostly Russians.
This demographic situation is connected to the history of the region. With the advent of the Soviet period, Buryats formed the Autonomous Buryat-Mongolian Republic within Russia. Due to Stalin’s 1937 partitioning of Buryat-Mongolia, about one-third of Russia’s Buryats ended up living outside Buryatia – either in the Transbaikal or Irkutsk regions. The Aga and Ust-Orda Autonomous Okrugs, formed after the partition, were eventually merged with the Transbaikal and Irkutsk regions, respectively, in 2008.
In Putin’s Russia, Buryatia has struggled economically, making the army a very competitive employer in the region. Thus, by 2014, many young men in Buryatia, regardless of ethnicity, had chosen to join the army as contract soldiers.
The above factors, along with the Russian military leadership’s deployment policies, predetermined the role of the troops from Buryatia in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Donbas War. Birth of the ‘Putin’s Militant Buryats’ Meme
In 2014/15, military units from Buryatia, along with other Russian troops, were deployed to the Donbas war. About one-third of the personnel from Buryatia were ethnic Buryats, and their distinctive Asian appearance blew the cover of the Russian army’s direct involvement in the conflict. Since then, Ukrainian media have labeled any Asian-looking Russian soldiers (Tuvans, Kazakhs, Sakha, Altai, etc.) as ‘Buryats’.
In response, the pro-Kremlin youth organization Set (‘Network’ in Russian) published in July 2015 the notorious video in which Buryat teens proclaim themselves ‘Putin’s militant Buryats’ and state that ‘Ukrainians are so scared that they see Buryats everywhere’, implying that the evidence for the presence of ethnic Buryat troops in Donbas was ‘not true’. This is how the ‘Putin’s militant Buryats’ meme was born. Later, in 2022, one of the participants told prominent Buryat journalist Alexandra Garmazhapova that she and other young Buryats were paid to appear in the video.
However, it is quite possible that those young Buryats genuinely weren’t aware of the Buryat troops fighting in the Donbas war under the guise of the ‘Donbas militia’; it is telling that the video was filmed in Irkutsk and not in Buryatia. My 2022/23 research has shown that ethnic Buryat troops serving at Buryatia’s military bases at the time of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine were almost exclusively either from Buryatia or from the Transbaikal region (the former Aga Autonomous Okrug), but not from Ust-Orda or Irkutsk. In 2014/15, the situation was likely the same; it was therefore not these teenagers’ family members or acquaintances who were fighting in Donbas when the video was recorded. Given that official Russian media maintained that it was the ‘Donbas militia’ and not the Russian army fighting against Ukrainian forces, they might indeed have been unaware of Buryat participation in the conflict, making them ideal candidates for propaganda projects.
The ethnic Buryat population of the Transbaikal region lost its ethnic autonomy in Aga six years prior to the Donbas war. The Aga Buryat Okrug declined economically after losing autonomy. People who had worked in the Autonomous Okrug’s administrative structures lost their jobs. These factors drove Aga Buryat men to seek employment as contract soldiers at Buryatia’s military bases. The dark irony of the situation is that the Kremlin, having taken ethnic autonomy away from these people, then sent them to occupy another country’s territory under the pretext of ‘defending the language and ethnic autonomy rights of Donbas’ Russian-speaking population’. Unfortunately, at that time too few Buryats noticed anything wrong with this picture.
2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, troops of Russia’s Eastern Military District (including Buryatia), along with paratroopers from Pskov, invaded Ukraine’s Kyiv region from the north via the Belarusian border. Months earlier, they had been deployed to Belarus under the pretext of ‘joint military exercises’ with Belarusian forces in preparation for the invasion. Simultaenously, the 11th Air Assault Brigade from Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, was deployed to Crimea in preparation for the assault on the Zaporizhzhia region.
Military units from Buryatia were among the first to cross into Ukraine. As in 2015, the ethnic Buryat troops stood out due to their Asian appearance and made headlines in multiple media reports on the invasion. Soon thereafter, it became evident that Buryatia was responsible for a disproportionately large fraction of Russian casualties.
As Russia’s military leadership doesn’t disclose any data on the true scale or ethnic/regional composition of its war losses, the only sources of such information are obituaries and social media posts about Russian army soldiers killed in action. This type of data has been collected by various activist groups, including those collaborating with Mediazona and BBC News Russian.
What do the obituary datasets tell us about Buryatia’s war losses?
During the first 20 days of the invasion, a staggering 4.1% of Russia’s confirmed war casualties were from Buryatia, though only 0.6% of Russia’s working-age male population lives in the region. Ethnic Buryats (almost exclusively from Buryatia and Transbaikalia) made up 2.5% of Russia’s confirmed death toll over the same period, though Buryats make up only 0.35% of Russia’s population.
This dramatic disproportion attracted much media attention and speculation. Some commentators invoked the ‘warlike savage’ stereotype, claiming Buryats are somehow more belligerent and inclined to go to war. However, since the majority of Buryatia’s population (and its soldiers) are ethnic Russians, such racialised claims do not explain the disproportionate death toll. In reality, the geographic distribution of Russia’s death toll has more to do with the military’s recruitment and deployment policies than with any alleged psychological traits of ethnic groups.
Buryatia is a border region, heavily militarised but sparsely populated, with many military bases and few employment opportunities for young men. In February 2022, military units from Buryatia – most notably the Fifth Tank Brigade from Ulan-Ude – were tasked with some of the deadliest missions, resulting in a high death toll. Forty percent of the Fifth Tank Brigade personnel were Buryats from Buryatia and Aga (Transbaikal region), further skewing the ethnic composition of casualties. The Fifth Tank Brigade being the only specialised tank unit in Russia’s Eastern Military District obviously played a far greater role in this ethnic bias than any cultural stereotype.
Meanwhile, Irkutsk Buryats were largely unaffected until the so-called ‘partial mobilisation’ campaign of September–November 2022 (see Table 1). Unlike Buryatia, Irkutsk is not a border region and has no military bases; it also belongs to a different military district (Central, not Eastern). Thus, there were very few Irkutsk Buryats among the 2022 invasion forces.
Irkutsk Buryats among Russia’s 2022 invasion forces.
Table 1. Confirmed ethnic Buryat casualties by region of residence as of September 2022 and March 2025. Source: Inner Asia
| Region | Buryat population (2021 census) | % of Buryat population in region | Ethnic Buryat casualties (September 2022) | % of ethnic Buryats among the casualties from region (September 2022) | Ethnic Buryat casualties (March 2025) | % of ethnic Buryats among the casualties from region (March 2025) |
| Buryatia | 299589 | 30.6 | 101 | 42.4 | 739 | 31.8 |
| Transbaikal region | 65590 | 6.7 | 38 | 24.2 | 128 | 7.9 |
| Irkutsk region | 74746 | 3.2 | 5 | 5.8 | 145 | 6.2 |
The situation changed after the ‘partial mobilisation’ campaign, prison draft, and 2023/24 volunteer recruitment campaign. As of March 2025, Irkutsk Buryats have a higher number of war casualties than Aga Buryats.
Overall, the geography of Russia’s war death toll has shifted westward toward the Central Military District (including the Irkutsk region), with Bashkortostan and Tatarstan currently showing the highest number of casualties among all Russian regions.
As of March 2025, Buryatia accounts for 2.4% of Russia’s war casualties. This trend has continued despite disproportionate drafting during the 2022 ‘partial mobilisation’ campaign; Buryatia’s residents were drafted twice as often as Russia’s average
(https://istories.media/stories/2024/08/01/za-dengi-da/). Ethnic Buryats from Buryatia, Irkutsk, and Transbaikal regions make up about 1% of confirmed Russian casualties as of March 2025.
War Crime Allegations
After the de-occupation of the Kyiv region in April 2022, evidence of horrific war crimes surfaced, the most infamous being the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians in the city of Bucha. In early April 2022, rumors began circulating that military units from Buryatia – more specifically, ‘bloodthirsty Buryat savages’ – were responsible for the Bucha massacre. These racialised narratives became so widespread in Ukrainian, independent Russian, and Western media that even Pope Francis appeared to believe them during his November 2022 interview with America magazine: ‘Generally, the cruelest [Russian Armed Forces’ soldiers in Ukraine] are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryati and so on.’
It is hard to pinpoint the original source of these rumors. One possible culprit is an article by Ukrainian journalist Lilia Ragutskaya published by the Obozrevatel media outlet on 4 April 2022. In this article, Ragutskaya claimed that ethnic Buryats were responsible for ‘murders, rape, and torture’ in Bucha and published a group photo of young Asian-looking Russian soldiers, presenting them as the alleged perpetrators.
However, the soldiers in the photo were neither Buryats nor in Bucha. They were Sakha (Yakut) conscripts photographed two years before the invasion at a military base in Khabarovsk Krai. The flag they were holding was that of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), not Buryatia. Many of them left the army after completing their mandatory one-year service and did not participate in the 2022 invasion at all.
Months later, it became clear that it was not military units from Buryatia who were responsible for the Bucha massacre. Hours of surveillance footage, evidence found on the ground in Bucha, obituaries of Russian casualties, interviews with Russian POWs captured by Ukrainians, and testimonies of Russian soldiers’ relatives all pointed to the 76th Air Assault Division from Pskov (the infamous pskovskie desantniki) as the actual perpetrators.
This conclusion was later confirmed by a number of detailed investigations published by the Ukrainian Suspilne media outlet, the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and The New York Times.
However, the myth that ‘bloodthirsty Buryat savages’ were responsible for the Bucha massacre has persisted, and many Ukrainians, anti-Kremlin Russians, and Westerners remain convinced it is true.
In reality, there are no monoethnic Buryat military units, and ethnic Buryat troops are always a minority, mostly serving under the command of ethnic Russian officers. It is highly unlikely that their involvement in war crimes – or their behavior as soldiers – differs significantly from that of their ethnic Russian counterparts.
The Enduring ‘Mongol Horde’ Stereotype
Portrayal of Buryats as the main perpetrators of war crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine is common in both Ukrainian and anti-Kremlin Russian social media discourse. For Russians, shifting the blame toward ethnic minorities (e.g., Chechens and Buryats) serves as a way to avoid responsibility (‘Russians aren’t to blame’). The demonisation of Asians is also connected to the ‘Mongol Yoke/Horde Legacy’ narrative, which is popular among anti-Kremlin Russians.
In short, this narrative blames Russia’s authoritarianism and imperialism on the Mongol conquests of the 13th–15th centuries. Thus, present-day Russian military aggression is viewed as a legacy of Asian influence. Within this mindset, Asian minorities such as Buryats and Tuvans are scapegoated as the modern bearers of the ‘Horde legacy’ (ordynskoye naslediye in Russian).
The ‘Mongol Yoke’ stereotype has also contributed to the ‘othering’ of Russians in Ukrainian society. Dr. Volodymyr Paniotto, a prominent Ukrainian sociologist and Director General of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, pointed out in an August 2024 interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that a majority (75%) of Ukrainians had a positive attitude toward Russians prior to the 2022 full-scale invasion. That changed dramatically within the first months of the war. As of August 2022, only 3% of Ukrainians maintained a positive view of Russians.
This radical change in perception required a shift away from the previously dominant ‘brotherly nations’ narrative. One way to justify the new view was to claim that Russians are ‘not actually Slavic’, and therefore not ‘brothers’ to Ukrainians. The most prominent version of this racialiced narrative invokes the ‘Mongol Yoke’ stereotype and claims that Russians are ‘genetically’ neither Slavic nor White due to the Mongol conquest, and are thus naturally barbaric, submissive, and hostile to ‘civilized White European’ Ukrainians. Buryats and Tuvans – both closely related to Mongols – being singled out as the alleged main perpetrators of war crimes (e.g., the Bucha massacre or the Yahidne concentration camp) is likely related to this stereotype.
Thus, a significant portion of both Ukrainian and anti-Kremlin Russian audiences view Russian imperialism and military aggression as a consequence of a ‘Mongol/Asian legacy.’ Ironically, such narratives are both anti-colonial and Eurocentric. The scapegoating of Russia’s Asian minorities as ‘bloodthirsty, warlike savages’ allegedly responsible for the Russian army’s worst atrocities in Ukraine is likely a manifestation of this dual mindset.
Conclusion
As of March 2025, Buryatia still ranks #8 in confirmed war casualties and #2 per capita among Russia’s 83 regions. The concentration of military units in the region – including specialised ones like the Fifth Tank Brigade and 11th Air Assault Brigade – along with Russia’s deployment policies, especially during the early weeks of the invasion, and disproportionate conscription during the 2022 ‘partial mobilisation’ campaign are likely the most significant factors behind this disproportionate death toll. Low median income and a scarcity of job opportunities also make voluntary enlistment more attractive to Buryatia residents, especially given the generous onboarding bonuses offered in 2024/25.
Military units from Buryatia played a significant role in both the Donbas war and the early phases of the 2022 full-scale invasion. Later, as more densely populated regions in the Urals, Volga, South Russia, and the Moscow Military District became more heavily involved, the geography of Russia’s war losses began to shift westward.
The demographic and social repercussions of the Ukraine war will be felt in Buryatia for years – if not generations – to come. The ethnic Buryat population, both inside and outside Russia (including Buryats living in Ukraine), also bears an unfair share of the moral burden associated with war crime allegations and the ‘bloodthirsty warlike savage’ stereotype. In reality, there is no meaningful difference in the participation of ethnic Buryats and ethnic Russians from the region in the war against Ukraine, and both will be equally affected by its consequences.
This blog is published in partnership with the Democratic Security Institute (DSI) based in Tbilisi, Georgia. It is part of a series of blogs authored by fellows from DSI’s Eurasia Democratic Security Network (EDSN) on the interrelationship between democracy and security in Europe’s eastern neighbourhood. EDSN is supported by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Image credit: Flickr, 2014.
Maria Vyushkova (Batani Indigenous Foundation, Yarmouth, ME, USA) is a PhD computational scientist, Buryat activist and expert in how Russia’s ethnic minorities are involved in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Dr. Vyushkova completed her PhD degree in Chemistry from the Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion in Novosibrisk, Russia in 2009, and as of 2022, worked as a computational scientist with the University of Notre Dame. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Maria Vyushkova co-founded the Free Buryatia Foundation, the first ethnic anti-war organisation of Russia’s Indigenous people, and used her expertise as a computational scientist to analyse the ethnic composition and ethnic inequalities in the Russian-side death toll of the Ukraine war. In 2023, she published a pioneering research paper on Russia’s ethnic minority casualties of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. On 18 September 2024, Maria Vyushkova testified in the US Helsinki Commission Congressional hearing on Russia’s imperial identity. The paper is prepared within the Fellowship of Eurasian Democratic Security Network implemented by the Democratic Security Institute with the support of National Endowment for Democracy