Russia's minorities do not recognize elections

With a joint statement, the autonomist leaders of Tatars, Circassians, Scandinavians, Baskirs and activists of other minorities reject the results of the local elections held throughout the country two weeks ago. The vote heavily influenced by the repression of every alternative voice to Putin is defined as a "shameful political farce" in a "Russian Federation that has no future"

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The various regionalist and national liberation movements, which represent the native peoples and the "colonized" regions of the Russian Federation, have issued a statement in which they declare that they do not recognize the results of what they define as the recent "pseudo- administrative elections in the various federal entities last 8-10 September, which also involved the occupied and "annexed" regions of Ukraine.

The electoral event, according to the press release, was organized "by the Russian criminal regime, led by the international criminal Vladimir Putin". The independence movements declare that they do not recognize "this shameful political farce".

In a phase of war aggression, of increasingly explicit imposition of dictatorship and deprivation of citizens' rights and freedoms, with the closure of independent media and social defense institutions, in the midst of political repression and persecution of "different thinkers", these elections have shown even more clearly that "the Russian Federation has no future, and the Putin regime does not enjoy real consensus among the people, it is in reality living its last days".

It was a lying election of Ruscismo, the Russian-fascist regime, by a terrorist country led by war criminals, the statement said. The opposition to it, according to the representatives of the peoples of Russia, "is possible in many other ways, including armed resistance, but without trying to descend to the level of Putin's criminal system". Certainly today in Russia "honest elections are not possible, and the existence of this lying state constitutes a threat to the entire civilized world". Non-Russian peoples therefore propose to "totally dismantle" the Federation, creating a series of new independent countries in the "regions colonized by Russia", as a possible guarantee of peace for all.

The International Committee of the Native Peoples of Russia was signed by Sergej Antonov of the "Free Udmurtia" movement, Rafis Kašalov, prime minister of the government of independent Tatarstan in exile and co-founder of the "Free Idel-Ural" movement which unites the various nationalities of Ural area, by Meretuko Kenan Kaplan, president of the United Council of Circassia, by Denis Ugrjumov, of the “Free Ingermanlandia” movement of the Scandinavian peoples of Russia, by Ruslan Gabbasov, leader of the Bashkir national movement abroad, by Aida Abrakhmanova of the Center of the Pan-Tatar social movement in Sweden, by Petr Khlebovič of the anti-communist opposition in Poland and co-president of the eastern section of "Fighting Solidarnost", and many other personalities who have long been committed to promoting the autonomy of these peoples as well as activists, politicians and scholars  from Kazakhstan, Belarus, the Russian region of Smolensk on the border with Poland and Belarus and from various areas of Siberia and the Caucasus.

The signatories recall that "in history every people has to face trials, there are days of joy and those of sadness, and we must always honor the memory of our ancestors, of our national heroes, who with their sacrifice, risking and losing their lives, have defended the interests of peoples, regions and states". From the Ukrainian poet Taras Ševchenko to Nelson Mandela, there is no shortage of examples to follow, in every country in the world.