1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2023
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 12, 2023
Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and
Frederick W. Kagan
April 12, 5:30pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is
updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion
of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces
daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive
monthly.
The Kremlin’s campaign of “Russification” in Ukraine is burning back into Russia itself
as it continues to empower and amplify overtly nationalist voices and ideologies. Russia
is engaged in a campaign of deliberate “Russification” within Ukraine aimed at the destruction of
Ukrainian identity through a multitude of military, social, economic, legal, bureaucratic, and
administrative lines of efforts.[1] The ideologies that underpin the basis of this “Russification” also
form the rhetorical backbone of the pro-war information space, which frequently mirrors its militarism
with staunch Russian nationalism and intense xenophobia that is directed both at Ukraine and
Ukrainian identity as well as at domestic minorities within Russia itself.
The domestic ramifications of the acceptance of the ideology of “Russification” are
manifested in the responses by Russian authorities and prominent Russian milbloggers
to ethnic minorities in Russia. Several Russian milbloggers and commentators published their
reactions to a recent news story about the murder of a 17-year-old Russian student by a group of Tajik
migrants in Chelyabinsk and used the story to criticize Central Asian migrants and ethnic minority
communities for failing to integrate into Russian society.[2] Head of the Russian Investigative
Committee Alexander Bastrykin accused migrants of destabilizing Russia by importing terrorism and
extremist ideologies and emphasized the role of migration policy in ensuring public order.[3] Former
Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin amplified a criticism that authorities of the Tuvan
Republic are returning the indigenous Tuvan names to 104 administrative-territorial units, which one
milblogger decried as “pushing boundaries” unnecessarily during wartime.[4] Social media footage
circulated on April 12 shows a group of Russian men reportedly giving the Nazi salute and walking past
administrative buildings in Ufa, Bashkortostan while shouting “Russia is for Russians.”[5] These
instances of xenophobia and racism exemplify the crux of domestic “Russification.” The war in Ukraine
has empowered the most virulent voices in the information space to consolidate their ideology and
project it both towards the Ukrainian people and towards non-Slavic minorities in Russia itself. This
dynamic will likely escalate as the war continues and will outlive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
pervading the Russian domestic space for years to come.
These domestic-facing ramifications of “Russification” ironically continue to place the
onus of the war effort on the communities that it marginalizes. Bastrykin has previously
called for military authorities to specifically recruit migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus who
received Russian citizenship because these migrants have a “constitutional obligation to protect the
country that received them.”[6] Russian officials at the Sakharovo migrant center in Moscow are
reportedly requiring the center’s employees to offer migrants contracts for military service, as ISW
