Ever more nations within the current borders of the Russian Federation are at the edge of extinction, reflecting the Kremlin’s view that numerically small peoples, or those it views as closely related to ethnic Russians in any case, must either assimilate or die out, according to Ukrainian commentator Oleksiy Nesterenko.
This process has passed largely unnoticed in areas most people think of as ethnic Russian, such as Kostroma Oblast, where local people identified as a distinct Kostroma people in the past but now have entirely gone over to an ethnic Russian identity, he says.