Russia marks first Day of Indigenous Minority Peoples as activists question Kremlin definition

Russia has marked its inaugural Day of Indigenous Minority Peoples on 30 April, a new annual holiday introduced last year by President Vladimir Putin as a domestic alternative to the United Nations International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which is observed on 9 August.

The holiday has sharpened attention on Russia’s narrow legal definition of indigeneity. Russian law recognises only 47 ethnic groups while denying the same legal status to dozens of other peoples whose territories were absorbed during Russian colonisation.

President Vladimir Putin addresses representatives of Russia’s Indigenous peoples during a federal educational event. Putin’s official remarks, shown above, contrast sharply with criticism from Indigenous activists and independent experts. Source: APT via YouTube.

Russia is home to more than 180 ethnic groups, most of whom inhabited their current territories before and during Russian colonisation. Many members of these groups self-identify as Indigenous, but Russian law restricts the legal category to peoples maintaining a “traditional way of life” with populations capped at 50,000.

Russia did not ratify the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989 and abstained from voting on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.

Independent experts and activists have criticised the new holiday as whitewashing systemic russification and the erasure of Indigenous identities, arguing that it serves political ends rather than recognising Indigenous self-determination.

Dr Ekaterina Zibrova, an associate researcher at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and an ethnic Evenk, told The Moscow Times that Russian law reflected a broader pattern of state control over Indigenous peoples.

“Every state tries to control Indigenous peoples because they live on the land, and that land often has natural resources, or it is needed for construction, and so on,” Zibrova said. (Source: The Moscow Times, 30 April 2026)

Evenks number just over 38,000 people and are one of the 47 groups Russia legally recognises as Indigenous.

Indigenous groups not recognised under Russian law account for roughly 12 per cent of the national population, while those that are recognised make up between 0.6 and 1 per cent. Together they live on around 20 per cent of Russian territory, including major natural resource deposits.

The day was marked under the shadow of fresh repression of Indigenous activism. A military court in the Russian republic of Tatarstan on 28 April sentenced prominent Indigenous rights activist Fazyl Valiakhmetov, 71, to six years in prison for breaching Russia’s wartime censorship laws. Valiakhmetov was a leading figure in Tatarstan’s sovereignty movement in the 1990s.

The UN has continued to provide a platform for Russian Indigenous people who are not recognised by Moscow. The 25th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, held from 20 April to 1 May 2026, included delegates from across the Russian Federation, among them representatives of groups not recognised by Moscow.