- Buryatia is a sparsely populated region in the Far East of Russia, sharing its southern border with Mongolia. Normally away from the spotlight, Buryatia received vast media attention in the wake of the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, when military units based in Buryatia played a significant role in the assault on Ukraine’s Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia regions; they accounted for a notable portion of Russia’s war death toll. Moreover, immediately after the de-occupation of the Kyiv region in April 2022, the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians in the city of Bucha was blamed on troops from Buryatia, attracting even more negative attention to the region and its Indigenous population. The ‘Putin’s militant Buryats’ meme, dating back to the 2015 Donbas war, took on a new, even more sinister meaning.