PSCRP-BESA Reports No 158 (October 11, 2025)
On September 24, Russian security forces detained the leader of the protest movement in the Republic of Altai — 39-year-old Aruna Arna, whom her supporters call the “people’s leader of Altai.” She has been charged with “public calls for separatism”.
In 2019, she founded and headed a civic organization called the Council of Residents of the Republic of Altai, which she initiated to oppose the large-scale appropriation of the republic’s lands by wealthy investors from the federal center. These investors sought to develop elite tourist and recreational infrastructure projects.
Thanks to its unique natural and ecological conditions, tourism is one of the key sectors of the Republic of Altai’s economy. According to official data, around two million tourists visit the region annually, drawn by rafting, eco-tours, extreme attractions, and horseback excursions. Even Vladimir Putin himself has chosen Altai as a vacation destination. Since 2019, Aruna Arna has become one of the most prominent public figures in the republic.
However, what was once permissible in Russia before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has become forbidden since then. In April 2023, Arna was issued two administrative citations for posts criticizing mobilization into the Russian army for the war in Ukraine. In November of the same year, her apartment in Gorno-Altaysk was searched for nine hours. In April 2024, a Russian court fined her 180,000 rubles over a Telegram post alleging falsification of the Russian presidential election results.
Despite this, in April 2025, Aruna Arna led protests against proposed amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Altai, particularly the removal of a clause on territorial integrity. Protesters feared that the change was a step toward dissolving the Republic of Altai as a federal subject and merging it with the neighboring Altai Krai.
In June 2025, Arna became the leader of mass demonstrations against the abolition of local self-governance bodies — the village councils — a reform pushed by the federally appointed head of the Republic, Andrei Turchak. Protesters demanded his resignation. These demonstrations drew widespread attention, even beyond Altai.
In retaliation, the authorities added Aruna Arna to the official “register of terrorists and extremists” in August of this year. Her arrest at the end of September was, therefore, only a matter of time.
The Republic of Altai is a small and sparsely populated constituent entity of the Russian Federation. Its area is about 93,000 square kilometers (35th among Russian regions), and its population, as of 2025, is only about 210,000 people. It is located in southern Siberia, at the junction of the borders of Russia, Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan. Outside Russia, few people are familiar with its ethno-cultural particularities and problems, which makes it appropriate to describe them in more detail — as well as the broader trend across Russia toward the elimination of rural and settlement administrations.
The indigenous people of the Republic of Altai, the Altaians (formerly known in Russian as Oirots), are a Turkic people belonging to the Mongoloid race. Among them, to some extent, an ancient tribal division persists, including such groups as the Telengits, Teleuts, Kumandins, Tubalars, and Chekans. In the late Middle Ages, the Altaians had their own state — the Telengit Ulus — which became a tributary of Russia in the 17th century and was annexed in the early 18th century.
The traditional religion of the Altaians was shamanism. In the 19th century, Russian missionaries made extensive efforts to convert the Altaians to Orthodoxy, but their success was quite limited. During the same period, Russian settlers began moving into the territory of present-day Altai. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the influx of Russian settlers had become massive, leading to a land crisis among the Altaians, who were traditionally pastoralists. Against this backdrop arose a religious-ethnic movement known as Burkhanism or the Altai Faith. Alongside its spiritual dimension, Burkhanism served as a nonviolent national-political movement. A direct outcome of this movement was the establishment in 1918 of the first ethno-territorial autonomy of the Altaians, called the Karakorum-Altai Regional Council, headed by the artist Grigory Choros-Gurkin. After the end of the Civil War, in 1922, the Bolsheviks created the Oirot Autonomous Region (renamed the Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region in 1948).
On October 25, 1990, the Supreme Council of the Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region, which at that time was part of Altai Krai, decided to secede and transform the autonomous region into an autonomous republic (the federal authorities officially recognized this new status of Gorny Altai in April 1992). At the same time, the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Republic of Altai was adopted.
According to the 2010 census, Russians made up 56.6% of the republic’s population, Altaians 34.4%, and Kazakhs — a people related to the Altaians but traditionally Muslim — 6.2%. Despite a relatively high degree of linguistic Russification among the indigenous population, the majority of ethnic Altaians (estimated at no less than 70%) practice Burkhanism, shamanism, and Buddhism. The rest are mainly Orthodox Christians. Religious syncretism is characteristic of the region: distinctions between adherents of different faiths are often blurred.
Given this ethno-religious context, it is important to note that in both Burkhanist and shamanic practices, sacred sites — which are often natural landmarks — hold special significance. Consequently, the struggle against the seizure or purchase of these natural sites by outside wealthy investors frequently takes on the character of an ethno-religious confrontation.
Ethnic groups are distributed unevenly across the republic: Russians form an absolute majority in six of its districts (aimaks) and in the capital; Altaians predominate in three districts; in one district, the two groups are roughly equal in number; and in another, Kazakhs form the majority (50.16%), followed by Altaians (44.48%), while Russians make up only 3.12%. Given the near total dominance of the Russian language in the capital, monoethnic villages continue to serve as the final strongholds of the national language and culture.
The law introducing a single-tier system of local self-government — effectively abolishing rural and settlement councils — was adopted by the Russian State Duma in March of this year, more than three years after it was first submitted for consideration. The law includes a clause allowing the federal subjects to decide for themselves whether or not to retain their lower-level self-governing bodies.
Given that the direct election of regional heads by citizens was legally abolished in Russia back in 2004 as part of Putin’s construction of the so-called “vertical of power,” there is no doubt that all current regional leaders are Kremlin appointees acting in strict accordance with Moscow’s directives. However, in the case of this particular law, some of these appointees dared to express open dissent. The abolition of rural and settlement councils deprives all local residents, regardless of ethnicity, of any opportunity to influence decisions that directly affect their lives.
Yet, since civil society in Russia has effectively ceased to exist and there is no organized opposition, these Moscow-appointed regional heads have no reason to take public opinion into account. The only exceptions to this rule are ethnically non-Russian regions, where — due to the factors mentioned above — local nationalism can become a trigger for protest movements. It is therefore no coincidence that the only two regional leaders who openly spoke out against the transition to a single-tier system during the law’s discussion were Rustam Minnikhanov of Tatarstan and Radiy Khabirov of Bashkortostan — two key republics with non-Russian ethnic majorities. It can be assumed that it was largely due to their criticism that the final version of the law included the clause granting regional authorities the right to decide whether or not to abolish rural and settlement councils.
However, the head of the Republic of Altai — where the titular nationality is a minority — is Andrei Turchak, an ethnic Russian born and raised in Leningrad, who arrived in Altai only a year ago. He has been implementing the federal center’s policies in the republic without any regard for local ethnic specificities or the interests of the region’s residents. The result has been powerful protests (significant given the small local population), demonstrating that the regional-ethnic factor in the Republic of Altai remains politically relevant.
The protesters’ fears that the authorities intend to merge the Republic of Altai with Altai Krai appear quite credible. Over the past 20 years, six ethnic autonomous regions with the status of federal subjects have been eliminated in Russia: the Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Okrug, the Agin-Buryat Autonomous Okrug, the Evenk Autonomous Okrug, the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug, the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, and the Taymyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug. In 2020, there was an attempt to deprive the Nenets Autonomous Okrug of its subject status by merging it with the Arkhangelsk Region, but protests by the Nenets population forced the authorities to abandon the plan. It is far from certain that such a reversal would still be possible under current Russian conditions.
The organized protest movement in the Republic of Altai has undoubtedly caused serious concern among the authorities, who have responded with harsh repression in line with the general policy of intimidation of dissenters in today’s Russia. By arresting and prosecuting Aruna Arna, they are attempting to deprive the movement of its charismatic leader.
It should be noted, however, that the protest movement in the Republic of Altai does not — at least at this stage — have an explicitly nationalist character; it addresses all residents of the republic, regardless of ethnicity. Aruna Arna is not affiliated with the League of Free Nations, an organization operating outside Russia that seeks the disintegration of the Russian Federation and the creation of new states based on ethnic and regional lines. Nonetheless, the League of Free Nations has recently devoted considerable attention in its broadcasts to events in the Republic of Altai and to Aruna Arna personally.
Although in the past the Altai people found original ways to struggle for their national self-determination — and continue to do so even now, when open street protests in Russia have become exceedingly rare due to repression — there is no doubt that the small Altaian nation (with a population of under 100,000) will not be able to achieve self-determination in any form on its own.
It appears that the future course of events in the Republic of Altai will be heavily influenced by the development of the ethno-political situation in the neighboring Republic of Tyva, which has a significantly larger population with a clear predominance of the titular nationality and a relatively recent tradition of independent statehood (up to 1944). The future of the Republic of Altai will also undoubtedly be affected by its proximity to Kazakhstan and China.