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In October 2022, two young Siberians boarded a flimsy rowboat on the coast of Eastern Russia. Their goal was simple - to traverse 300 miles across the Bering Sea, one of the coldest and most dangerous seas in the world, in a 15-foot watercraft designed for inland lakes and streams. Their destination was Alaska - where they hoped to land safely and seek asylum from
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a phantom that has been haunting the Siberian landscape for nearly 500 years. The level of desperation displayed by these Siberians would be difficult to overstate. But the question is - what exactly were they running from? The section of ocean they crossed has been described by local fishermen as “a continuous storm.” It’s a sea known for massive waves, large chunks of floating ice, and extremely cold
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weather that can easily make you hypothermic if you’re not properly prepared - a dangerous place for even large, well-equipped commercial fishing vessels with coast guard support, let alone for two Russian individuals trying to fly under the radar and avoid detection. But despite the danger involved, these men were willing to take their chances. As far as they were concerned, the risk of drowning at sea was far less than the risk
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of being drafted and forced to fight on the Ukrainian front. You see, these men were ethnic Siberians. And that meant that due to discriminatory Russian policies, they were some of the most likely men in all of Russia to be drafted and sent to the front lines, where they would be deployed in areas that have since been described by soldiers from both sides as meat grinders.
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Facts about Siberians being unfairly targeted for the draft have been cited in numerous reports coming from a wide variety of different sources - including the president of Mongolia - who publicly offered shelter to Russian Mongols who sought to avoid conscription, because, in his words, they were being used by Russia as cannon fodder.
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Even in the 21st century, this, apparently, is the way things were done in Putin’s Russia. By conscripting men from Siberian villages that were largely disconnected from mainstream Russian society, both in terms of infrastructure, and in terms of culture, Russia was able to mask the true cost of the War in Ukraine from the bulk of the population living in Russia’s urban centers - at the expense of the nation’s ethnic minorities.
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The Siberian regions, many of whom were among the most vocal internal opponents against Moscow’s abuses of power, were being bled of their young men of fighting age while being used to whittle down Putin’s external opposition. And the coming months of war would prove just how little these people mattered to the Russian elite and their generals. This is an intense story.
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But it hardly begins with the War in Ukraine. Stay tuned - and be prepared to learn some pretty crazy facts that I guarantee most of you have never heard before. Russia is a massive country, a giant that spans multiple continents.
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At one point, Russia was so large that it held sizable territories in Europe, Asia, and even North America - all at the same time. The Russian landmass currently spans across an impressive 11 time zones and makes up an impressive one eighth of all the land on the entire planet Earth, making it by far the largest nation in existence.
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Its land holdings make it more than double the size of the continental United States, and the world’s second largest nation, Canada, is only a little over half the size of Russia. In every area of the world that covers this much sheer landmass, the sheer distance and the existence of impassable geographical barriers means that you would expect to see huge swathes of unique people groups, separated initially by nature, and later by culture.
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And Russia is no different. Inside its borders there are over 100 different spoken languages, spread across 85 separate territories - 22 of which are considered republics, with their own official language, legislature, and the appearance of autonomy in all but international affairs. I say the appearance of autonomy for reasons we’ll delve into later.
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This is a very diverse country - and it is often surprising for people to learn that many Russians are genetically much more Asian than they are European - with closer genetic ties to Mongolians than to Russians living in the big cities west of the Ural Mountains. All in all, Russia contains a huge swathe of minority groups - spread across the vast Siberian landscape, with many living in some of the most remote and isolated villages on
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earth. But things weren’t always this way. Hundreds of years ago, the land that is now Russian Siberia was dominated by independent tribes, and Russia’s domain was restricted to the Eastern European lands that lay west of the Ural Mountains - the chain of mountains that still divides Russia’s main urban and political centers from remote Siberian regions to this very day.
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Rather than being an empire, Russia at that time was more of a loose collection of city states that shared a similar cultural identity - city states that would one day become the modern cities of Kiev, Novgorod, Rostov, and Moscow, which were mostly focused on local international affairs, and had little knowledge of, or interest in, the mysterious and harsh lands to the east. For the vast majority of human history, to both the Russian people, and to the remote
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Siberian tribes on the other side of the Urals, the other side may as well have not even existed. But that all began to change in the mid 13th century, when Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde came from the southern parts of these strange eastern lands and conquered the Russian city states, forcing them into slavery and subjugation at the hands of the Mongol Empire. It was a move that would define Russian history, and even modern day conflicts, by starting
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a chain of attacks and retaliation that in some ways is still ongoing to this very day, a fact that will be explored throughout this video. For several hundred years, the Golden Horde oppressed the Russian people, with immense brutality. At the height of their power, the Mongol Empire controlled over 22% of the earth’s surface, and to keep these vast territories in check, they relied on dramatic moments of barbarism
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that were designed to inspire fear and intimidation among their subjects. They inflicted so much barbarism, in fact, that most historians believe Genghis Khan killed close to 40 million people during his reign, equivalent to 10% of the population of the entire planet earth at the time. It was a form of ancient psychological warfare that ensured people were too afraid to resist
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his rule - and in the dawn of their own empire, the Russians observed this brutality firsthand, and watched closely - taking notes. When it came time to start a reign of their own, these would be the stories and examples they remembered. After several generations, the city state of Moscow began to grow in power, and successfully rallied the other Russian city-states together to form a unified army that would ultimately
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drive the Golden Horde out and reestablish Russian independence - this time, as a more unified people. And they were united more than anything else by their hatred of, and their fear of, the Mongols. It wouldn’t be long before they would take that hatred and fear, along with the lessons they had learned from the Golden Horde about how to build and manage a vast empire, to the east of the Ural Mountains, and wield them against the tribes of Siberia.
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One of the first moves of this new Moscow alliance was to secure their borders against future invasions from the Mongols or other eastern tribes. The Mongols had been able to easily invade Russia because it sat in a vast grassland that had almost no strategically defensible territory. To remedy this, the Russians would need to push east to find a natural border, at first to the Ural Mountains, which covered most of their eastern flank, and then even further,
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as they sought for a river that could make the southern portion of their border more secure. Their quest would lead them to the cold, untamed wilderness of Siberia. As the Russians pushed east, they found their river border - but they also found a vast land filled with untapped resources, and their goals quickly changed.
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The cold conditions meant that the animals in the region produced extremely thick fur coats of higher quality than most Europeans at the time had ever imagined - something that was sure to make the Russian people, or at least the Russian tsars, very, very rich in trade - if they could gather these furs at sufficient scale. The problem was, Siberia was very far away from Russia’s population centers - and as
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it turns out, even back in those days, most people didn’t want to leave the relative comfort of an established city state like Moscow to wander the cold Siberian wilderness gathering furs. But luckily for Russia, Siberia had yet another untapped resource available to them - there were already other people in the region - and, they were expert hunters. Many of these people were independent, but others had tribute relationships with the
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Mongol Empire - Russia’s old sworn enemy. This gave the Russian tsars a dark idea. It was here that history would witness what could perhaps be described as one of the first instances of famous Russian whataboutism - where Russia feigns moral outrage at the actions of others, and then turns around to do exactly the thing that they claim they’re outraged
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about, the very first time they have the opportunity to do so, using the actions of others as their excuse for doing the same thing. In this case, the burgeoning Russian Empire, which had expanded to the east originally to protect itself from the Mongol Empire, would now become the tribute-exacting force that replaced the Mongols, showing that they were actually totally okay with oppression - so long as they weren’t the unlucky ones being oppressed.
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Russia would offer the native Siberian tribes the deal of a lifetime - they would allow them to keep living, in exchange for joining their empire and providing regular deliveries of furs to Russian outposts scattered across Siberia. In some cases, this tribute was extracted directly following threats of force from the Russian army. But that led to great bitterness and insurrection among the Siberian people, so, as time went
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on, the scheme became slightly more sophisticated in an attempt to paint the Russian army in a more favorable light. Instead of threatening them with violence directly, Russia would send government-backed Cossack raiders to terrorize the villages, and then they would come in and offer to protect the Siberians from the raiders in exchange for tributes of furs. This allowed Russia to exact its fur tributes while being seen as saviors rather than conquerors.
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The fact that they and the raiders were actually one and the same was a fact conveniently left out of the negotiations. And this type of false-flag attack is something still very present in Russian geopolitics to this very day, such as when Russia sent government-backed insurgents to manufacture a conflict in eastern Ukraine following its annexation of Crimea in 2014. In this instance, Russia delivered packages disguised as humanitarian aid that were actually
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filled with weapons to provoke internal distress. After nearly a decade of Kremlin-sponsored conflict in the region, Vladimir Putin then sent in the Russian army under the pretense of protecting the ethnic Russians in the area. But the truth is, just as was the case with the raids on the Siberian villages, there is a lot of evidence that it was Russia itself, and not Ukraine, that was responsible for the oppression they claimed to be protecting the local people from.
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Back to Siberia, while this was clearly a very evil strategy, this way of doing things was also very effective. Rather than having to send highly-paid Russian workers to the region, all Russia would need to send was enough well-armed soldiers to scare the locals into submission, and then to man forts and protect the trade routes - often from imaginary enemies. The indigenous locals would become the unwilling enactors of the Russian fur trade, who did
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nearly all of the hard work, and provided all of the skill necessary, while the Russian elites to the west of the Urals - most of whom had never even seen Siberia - would become the benefactors. It was these very fur tributes that would make the tsars some of the richest people in all of human history, and by the time of Tzar Nicholas II around World War I, they had amassed a fortune that has been estimated at nearly $300 billion dollars in today’s
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money - close to twice the estimated wealth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But the Siberians didn’t just take this new reality lying down. Some of the smaller tribes gave in without a fight, mainly because they didn’t have enough fighting men to resist - or any culture of warfare to speak of. But other tribes resisted - violently. And when this happened, the Russian Empire was more than ready to show just how much
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they had been influenced by their Mongol roots. As just one example, the Daur tribe in the Kamchatka peninsula initially refused Russian rule, and then faced a Mongol-like depopulation campaign that reduced their numbers from 20,000 to less than 8,000 in just half a century. As they faced increasing opposition, Russia realized that it was expensive to try to subdue
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all of Siberia themselves. So they turned to an even more advanced version of the Cossack raider false flag strategy, and began to use tactics that would cause their enemies to do their fighting for them. They used propaganda to play off different ethnic groups against each other in manufactured wars, and then secretly played both sides behind the scenes in a divide and conquer scenario. This too is a strategy reminiscent of the tactics modern Russia still uses to this very
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day - especially among those who still study the political philosophy of the tsars. As one example, during the two most recent U.S. elections, reports emerged that groups of Russian hackers and social media trolls were intentionally stirring the waters in American politics to help inflame internal strife, resulting in at least a few instances of real-life conflict on American soil that were instigated by Russian operatives.
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That’s an interesting story, and there’s enough content there for a whole future video in and of itself - so, I hope you’ll subscribe so you don’t miss it when it comes. But back to the topic at hand, for the people of Siberia, fragmented into small, disunified, and generally ill-equipped tribes, resistance was ultimately futile. But these conquests of different Siberian people groups, which happened with relative
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ease, one after another, had an unintended side effect on the Russian psyche. As Siberian tribes fell to the Russian whim one after another, it bred overconfidence, and the people of the Russian Empire began to get the false idea that they were invincible conquerors, endowed with special power from God himself that made them unbeatable, and
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destined for greatness. The ease of conquest meant that eternal expansion became a motif of the Russian tsars, who were all expected to conquer more territories with each generation, all the way down to the Romanovs, the last Russian dynasty. The problem is, by the time of the Romanovs, Russia had run out of small tribes to push over, and when they then turned to try to conquer lands of a real empire, they were
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soundly squashed by Japan in some of the most embarrassing battle defeats in history. Still, the idea of divine greatness and favor that arose from the conquest of Siberia has been passed down throughout the Russian generations, to the extent that it was even alluded to by Vladimir Putin during his invasion of Ukraine, which to some degree he framed as a holy Russian battle against the corrupt and evil west.
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But this idea of Russian invincibility would prove to be deadly. Ultimately, Russia would conquer the cold Siberian landscape because it was easy, and sparsely populated, but they would be prevented from expanding into truly valuable terrain in warmer climates that were already populated by more powerful dynasties. And while on the surface, Siberia had become part of the Russian empire, in reality, it
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was little more than an outpost on a map. Because Siberia was so vast and sparsely populated, it was ultimately more expensive to govern than it was worth. So instead of establishing a strong administrative presence and expanding Russian culture among its new subjects, as most other world empires have done, Russia took a more minimalistic approach, and satiated itself with trading posts and fortresses strategically placed
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to protect important roads and river crossings and extract the wealth of the land from the Siberian people. The ethnic Siberians continued to speak their own languages, and practice their own traditions, with completely distinct cultures from Moscow, and from each other. But this wasn’t because Russia cared about preserving their cultural identity. It was because Russia couldn’t be bothered to govern them. Often, Siberians’ only interaction with the Russian Empire was when they visited the
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closest trading post to deliver their tribute of furs, or when they defended themselves from a government-organized raid on their village for failing to do so. As such, many Siberians weren’t even aware that they were part of the Russian empire at all. When it came to infrastructure, the few roads that the Russian Empire built were intentionally designed to link back to Moscow, rather than connecting the distinct Siberian cultures
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with each other - a pattern that still exists to an unsettling degree to this very day. This was partially about efficient use of resources, but it was mostly about politics. By keeping the Siberian people linked with Moscow, and separate from each other, Russia reduced the chances of the different groups organizing and gaining their freedom, the way that the Russian city states had organized to gain their freedom from the Mongols.
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Russia kept the territories separated, because the goal wasn’t to spread Russian culture. It was to extract Siberian wealth. When it came to mapping the new territory, internal maps of Siberia were incredibly sparse, and most of the area still remained a complete mystery - because there was no need to map out resources when the threat of death meant that the locals would just bring them to the
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local trading post without the Russians having to go through the effort. But while internal maps were nonexistent, political maps were a different story entirely, and the nonexistent infrastructure in Siberia didn’t stop the Russian empire from leveraging its size to its full extent when it came to international affairs. The mere presence of Russia on the map became enough for other European powers to start taking them seriously - and ultimately it was this sheer size that allowed Russia to
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become recognized as an imperial power, even when they didn’t have much of an actual empire to show for it. This is kind of like how today Russia showcases their nuclear missiles in regular military parades to scare their geopolitical opponents, while internally, they’re secretly afraid that their nukes might not even work due to years of corruption and deferred maintenance. There’s the external portrayal, and then there’s the internal reality.
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And the legacy of the Russian Empire lives on. Siberia remained largely separated in this way from the rest of Russia for most of Russian history - but things began to change when the empire fell and the Soviet Union rose up in its place - and not in a good way. On paper, the Soviet Union acknowledged the sovereignty of Siberia’s many nationalities, who for generations had paid their tributes to the empire and retained their distinct
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identity. But in reality, the plight of the Siberians would become worse in many ways under Soviet rule than it ever was under the tsars. In this new modern world, furs were no longer as valuable as they had once been as a world-class trade product. And for the Soviets, the most valuable resource Siberia had to offer was its people. When World War II broke out, the Soviets conscripted a staggering 20% of all Siberian natives for
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military service on the front lines, forcing them to fight in a war that had nothing to do with their homelands or their traditions. Siberians were no longer merely being exploited for their wealth - they had now become pawns in a larger geopolitical game, and like everything else in Siberia, they were seen as little more than resources to be expended for the power and profit of the elite in Moscow.
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Back on the homefront, many nomadic Siberian people were forced to settle in favor of centralized communist farming methods. As such, Siberian cultures were erased, and children were taken away from their families and put in Soviet schools to learn a new way of life. For the first time, efforts were made to suppress native languages, and Siberians were pushed to adopt the Russian language in favor of their native dialects.
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This approach was a drastic failure. One glaring example was the Soviet intervention in reindeer herding, where communism failed among the reindeer herders because their cultures were already too generous and built around ideals of community sharing that went far beyond forced Soviet bureaucracy. For thousands of years, Siberian tribes had developed intricate systems and practices
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around reindeer herding based on tribal knowledge. They had a way of life where everyone participated, and where there were no hard lines between work and pleasure. You were a reindeer herder, and that’s just who you were, and that’s just what you did. Life was just life. But this made it impossible for Soviet bureaucrats to measure their productivity. So the tribes were instead forced into arbitrary and rigid working days with set times for
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labor and for leisure. Reindeer herds began to fail due to inadequate care, and the tribes were punished for being lazy and unproductive. But the reality was, they had simply come from a different culture. Still, during the time of the Soviet Union, many Siberians did make meaningful steps towards a better life. The fur tax on Siberians was dissolved in 1917 following the collapse of the Russian
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Empire, and independent sovereign Siberian republics began to pop up all around Russia. These independent republics had their own official languages, constitutions, and even their own national anthems, which seemed to be a step in the right direction. Around the collapse of the Soviet Union, things got even better, for a short time, and around the formation of the Russian Federation, in the year 1992, the republics were granted
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substantial rights and autonomy. It seemed that Siberia had finally escaped the mighty grasp of the Russian tsars. But then came Vladimir Putin. Consistent with the tsarist philosophy, Putin saw Siberia as far too profitable to ignore. As he came into power, one of his very first agendas was focused on centralization, eliminating the autonomy of the Russian republics and bringing them all into line.
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This may have been a response to the Chechen war, which Putin oversaw as he stepped into power, and which underscored the danger of allowing independent republics to have too much autonomy. But whatever his reason, Putin was determined to have the rights of the republics removed. In 2001, the Kozak Commission was formed under his leadership in his second year as president, with the stated goal of balancing the powers between the central Russian government and
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the different republics. However, in practice, all it managed to do was strip the regions of their autonomy and give it to Putin’s government. Over the years since then, the Russian republics have lost so much autonomy, that even the European Parliament now considers Russia to be a unitary state rather than a federation. And this unitary state could bear dire consequences for Siberian identity.
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With the rise of new technologies like radio, television, and the internet, mass communication, and mass education, has now become a possibility that the Russian Empire never had. In this new world, Putin’s Russia has set a new goal, not of keeping ethnic groups separate, but of assimilating them into a singular Russian identity. Particularly in some of the most remote regions of Siberia, internet is not a luxury that
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most people can afford - and one of the only sources of information available is Russian state sponsored television. This makes many Siberians especially vulnerable to Kremlin propaganda without even the possibility of balancing the narrative with other sources. This consistently whitewashes their own history, portrays Russia as their national saviors, and makes them prime targets for recruitment in Russia’s wars - especially among those
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who have no other way of earning a meaningful living, since, as would be expected, poverty is much higher among Siberians than it is for other Rusfsians west of the Urals. Whether through Kremlin propaganda, or through conscription campaigns, which disproportionately target ethnic minorities, a disproportional percentage of Siberians are finding themselves on the front lines in Ukraine, while, true to the realities of the times of the tsars,
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the wealthier Russians in Moscow and Saint Petersburg are comparatively spared from the brunt of the conflict. Long live, the Russian Empire. But luckily, not all Siberians have fallen for Putin’s games. Some have managed to hold onto their history, and see through the Kremlin talking points, recognizing that their ancestors themselves were the targets of similar propaganda not
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long ago, when Russia wanted to conquer their lands, instead of Ukraine. One Siberian, in response to a Russian military recruiter, said things best. When told that they needed to fight for their future, they responded: “We don’t even have a present. What future are you talking about?” He wisely avoided getting entangled in the conflict, just like the two Siberians boarding a row boat to cross the Bering Sea that we mentioned at the beginning of this video.
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Had they found themselves on the front line, they may have found themselves facing an experience similar to the one described from a soldier who came from a Siberian village near Lake Baikal: “They put us on a transport to take us to Rostov, where they told us we would receive training. They even let us smoke on the plane, because they knew half of us weren’t going to come back alive. The officers talked about it openly in front of us.
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And they were right. When we arrived in Rostov, we were put immediately on buses to Ukraine, without the promised training. We were shelled the first time as soon as we arrived, and eight men were killed on the spot.” While the last of the tsars may be dead, the legacy of the Russian Empire lives on. To learn more about how Russia is using its divide and conquer strategy against its modern
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day allies, check out my video on how Russia has been using false flags in an attempt to backstab Belarus. Or, if you’re interested in more information on the conditions that Siberians are being forced to fight in on the front lines, check out my video on the Battle for Bakhmut, which I’ll link at the end of the video. Today, you’ve heard unique perspectives that are no doubt difficult to find anywhere
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else. As an independent YouTuber, I can explore somewhat controversial topics and state things more bluntly than mainstream media can. My goal with my videos is always to explore the truth - especially truth that has been underreported by mainstream channels. And that means that sometimes I run the risk of getting demonetized due to the content I choose to explore - which, frankly, is understandable.
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So, if you enjoy this content, I would be extremely grateful if you would consider supporting the channel by checking out the merch store, and becoming a supporter on Patreon. But if you don’t want to, even a simple like and subscribe can go a long way to help this video’s reach. Thanks for watching, and supporting - and I’ll see you, on the next one.
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