Russia’s Republic of Grief

The first Russian soldier officially killed in action in Ukraine was a square-jawed twenty-five-year-old named Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov. According to the Ministry of Defense, he was caught in an ambush during the initial phase of the invasion and blew himself and the surrounding Ukrainians up with a grenade. When President Vladimir Putin announced that he was awarding the country’s highest honor—a Hero of Russia medal—to Gadzhimagomedov, he stressed that the senior lieutenant was from Dagestan. Putin added that, though he himself was an ethnic Russian, such heroism on the part of an ethnic minority made him proud to be “part of the powerful, strong, multiethnic people of Russia.”

In fact, the army executing Putin’s “special operation” features a striking number of young men from the ethnic republics. A Chechen battalion was highly visible, including on TikTok, in the siege of Mariupol. Ethnic Buryats and Bashkirs have been seen fighting and dying. This apparent overrepresentation of minorities is partly a function of demographic trends—but also of economic inequality and lack of opportunity in many of the areas outside the wealthy metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Because a majority of the Russian force consists of kontraktniki, or soldiers on contract, and because the contracts are relatively lucrative (as much as forty-seven hundred dollars a month, according to some sources), the men who sign up are often those who were unable to find gainful employment elsewhere.

The republic that has seen the most war dead, according to official figures—and where poverty, a martial tradition, and relative loyalty to Moscow intersect—is Dagestan. Dagestan lies at the southernmost tip of Russia, and shares a border with Chechnya, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Situated near the Caucasian mountain range, its lands feature towering brown peaks, desert canyons, and steppes ridged by sand dunes. The republic is predominantly Muslim but incredibly multiethnic, with fourteen official languages. It’s also one of the poorest republics in the country. Though it remained loyal to Moscow throughout the Chechen drive for independence, in the nineteen-nineties, it was later gripped by a radical Islamic insurgency. As Zarina Sautieva, a human-rights advocate and researcher from nearby Ingushetia, has argued, the insurgency resurrected age-old Russian fears of ethnic disloyalty, and severely limited the number of Dagestani draftees in the military. After the insurgency ended—Russian secret services directed restive elements to the civil war in Syria, where many were killed—Dagestani élites have been at pains to demonstrate their loyalty whenever possible.

Family pictures from the Saikumov house. Photos on the right are of Makhach’s father, Rasul, when he served in the Chechen war; the middle picture shows Makhach as a child, in a navy uniform.

A traditional mourning gathering held two weeks after the death of Gasanbek Agabekov, a twenty-four-year-old contract soldier.

Fruit and drink laid out in the Agabekov home, as part of a mourning rite for Gasanbek.

The Moscow-based photographer Nanna Heitmann recently travelled to Dagestan to talk with families and friends of the deceased. She found people who were deeply traumatized by loss, but who for the most part kept up a patriotic front. Parents, in particular, were adamant that their sons had died in a heroic cause. They spoke, as the Kremlin has done, about Ukrainian fascism and decadence—to some extent, perhaps, authentically, as Dagestan is a deeply religious and conservative society. More than one family mentioned Stalin as a man who could have handled this situation properly.

Beneath the surface, however, was a profound grief. At funerals, the families wept and wailed; at the stuffy official ceremonies where they received honors on their sons’ behalf, they could barely participate. And not everyone speaks in support of the war. As one young man said, “Stay at home. Tend to your garden. Nothing good can come of going off somewhere to kill people, no matter who they are.”

Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, is festooned with the letter “Z,” which has come to symbolize support for the war.

A training session for the national wrestling team, with a poster in the background of Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, the first Russian soldier officially killed in action in Ukraine.

Khadizhat Saikumov is a schoolteacher, in her late forties, who lives in the beautiful hillside village of Verkhneye Kazanishche, about an hour’s drive from Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala. She and her husband, Rasul, live in a house flanked by fields of chamomile and grazing cows. Both are mourning their eldest son, Makhach, who joined the military right out of high school. In January, Makhach got married, and he could have declined to join the invasion. But on February 23rd he called his father and told him that he’d received the order to go on a special operation, though he did not yet know what the operation was. He would soon have to surrender his phone, he said.

“Maybe you won’t go?” Rasul recalled saying.

“Would you go?” Makhach said.

Rasul had served as a paratrooper in the Russian army in Chechnya, in the nineties. “Of course I would go,” he answered.

Three weeks later, on March 17th, Makhach was hit by shrapnel in the back of the head near the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv. It was impossible to evacuate him, and he died later that day. He was twenty-four.

The parents are bereft. Every Friday, Khadizhat visits her son’s grave, in one of the village cemeteries. On the way, she hands out candy to kids and tells them it’s from Makhach; on Makhach’s grave, she leaves chocolates for passersby. Rasul, who during the winter works in the gas fields in northern Russia, and who suffered a stroke twenty days after his son’s death, is gruff and mostly silent. During one conversation, he said that Russia should have already bombed Poland and Germany, to punish them for supporting Ukraine. “My grandmother, for as long as I knew her, she cried every day,” he said. “Two of her brothers died in the Second World War. Since then, this fascism does not disappear. I didn’t think it would also affect my children.”

Rasul reproaches himself constantly for having encouraged his son to go to Ukraine. During the day, he hides in the fields, mends fences, builds a garden toilet—anything to avoid talking about Makhach’s death. It is only in the evening that he comes back home, red-faced.

Khadizhat is more stoic. In her large, tidy home, she said that she supported the war simply because Makhach had fought in it. “Makhach was a very religious boy,” she said. “If it wasn’t a just operation, he would not have gone to fight.” Her explanations aligned with Kremlin messaging—the Ukrainians were Nazis, and they wanted to spread homosexuality to Russia. “I love Ukraine and Ukrainian culture,” Khadizhat said. “They’re a very good people. But the ones who have taken over there . . . I don’t know. I think, as a teacher, they must not have been given tenderness when they were little. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Other relatives were angry. Rasul’s mother, who lives in a tiny house down the street, is eighty-four, with light skin and blue eyes. She said that she had raised Makhach while his parents worked, and that she thought of him as her own son. She didn’t understand why he had to die. “What do we need this war for?” she said. It was rare, in such conversations, for the word “war” to be uttered. Khadizhat gently said that the war was necessary for justice. But the grandmother was unrelenting. “What do we need Ukraine for?” she said.

The question hung in the air.

In Dagestan, family members of the deceased meet at regular intervals to grieve. An imam said that fifteen other men from Gasanbek’s area had died in the war.

On a hot and windy Thursday, the family of Gasanbek Agabekov, a twenty-four-year-old contract soldier, gathered to mourn. Gasanbek left his wife and infant child, born in March, to fight in Ukraine. In May, he returned to his family for ten days’ leave, but left after only three days to hitchhike back to the war. “This is my work and my duty,” he told his mother. Just three days later, on May 27th, he was killed by a drone.

Gasanbek’s family live in a sandstone house a few miles from Russia’s oldest city, Derbent. The city is fortified by thick stone walls; historically, it was an important stronghold, controlled by Turks, Persians, and Arabs before Russia conquered it in the nineteenth century. Gasanbek’s grandfather hailed from a small village in the mountains, but moved to the steppes around Derbent for a better life.

It had been two weeks since Gasanbek’s funeral. According to the local imam, fifteen other men from the area had died in the war. In Dagestan, family members of the deceased meet at regular intervals to grieve, and more than a dozen were now present for a memorial service. In a nearby cemetery, the imam recited suras from the Quran as everyone prayed. “The Almighty is the One who created life and death,” the imam said. “Only for this, to test man.”

Afterward, in accordance with tradition, the men convened outside the house, where they would spend all day honoring the memory of Gasanbek. The women retreated into the living room, where they sat in a circle—some on the couch, some on the floor, on thick carpets. The room was loud with the sounds of grief. Gasanbek’s mother told me that her son had just finished his law degree. “He got his diploma last year and didn’t use it,” she said. He was drawn to the military, she went on, because he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, who had fought against the Germans in the Second World War.

One often hears that young Dagestani men are ashamed to stay back in the village, whole and unharmed, while their brothers are fighting. In the house, Gasanbek’s aunt told me that almost every family there had a son in Ukraine. Her own child had recently returned with a bad concussion and trauma. He throws up all the time, and starts screaming. “All the children who were there change,” she said.

“There is no other work,” the imam added. “All go by contract to the army.”

The aunt nodded. She said that when she talked to her son on the phone, in Ukraine, the only thing she could hear in the background was bombing.

Mourners carry the body of Rustamov Munir Zalbegovitch, a forty-year-old soldier, to a cemetery.

Women gather in the Agabekov house. According to Gasanbek’s aunt, almost every woman in the home had a son in Ukraine.

Per tradition, male mourners convene outside the home. Young Dagestani men are often ashamed to stay in the village while their friends and family fight.

Chokhkommuna is a small village that lies high up in the mountains in the center of the republic. The roads there wind up and down steep serpentines. From parts of the village, you can look down at Gunib, a picturesque fortress that featured prominently in the Caucasian War of the nineteenth century. Imam Shamil, the leader of the Chechen and Daghestani tribes, made his last stand against the Russians at Gunib, before surrendering on August 25, 1859.

Today, on a stone wall near the village, one finds a poster of seven soldiers from the region who were killed during the operation in Ukraine. One is a portrait of Gusein Gasimov, a beautiful, thin young man with sharp, almost feminine features. Gusein signed a military contract less than a year ago; when he died in Ukraine, on March 6th, he was twenty-three years old. According to the village’s administration, some streets there will be renamed after him.

The grief of his parents, Makhach and Attikat, is palpable. The corners of Makhach’s mouth are pulled down low. Attikat seems to be always on the move to distract herself. Her left eye is infected, perhaps from tears. Neither talks much. The Gasimovs are small farmers—they have a few cows. In the evening, Attikat drives her cows back to the barn to milk them. What they don’t need for yogurt, milk, and cheese, she sells.

Outside the Gasimovs’ home is a construction site, the first floor of a house. It is the house Makhach had started building for his son. “Now we have to finish it. We can’t leave it half finished,” he said. After a while, he brought out the Order of Courage medal his son had received after dying. He said that it meant nothing; it would not bring his son back.

The parents of Gusein Gasimov, a twenty-three-year-old war casualty, received an Order of Courage after his death. They had begun building a house for their son, and aim to finish it.

One of many memorial posters for Dagestani soldiers killed during the war in Ukraine.

Abraham Arabchanov, an imam and teacher, lost his son, Kemran, in March. Kemran left behind a wife and two daughters.

The posters are everywhere. In Tabasaranskiy Rayon, one of the poorest areas of Dagestan, you see them again and again, the faces blurring together. The roads here are gravel and slink through the mountains. The land is a bright, saturated green, and little hills and forests bloom with purple flowers.

There are so many funerals that one runs into them by accident. At one crossroads, a column of cars blocked the way: relatives of a soldier who had recently died in Ukraine. The body had just been brought in an ambulance. The cars wound their way to a small, scenic village named Nitchras; in accordance with Muslim tradition, the body was washed and taken to the family home. The cries of women could be heard from outside the walls. After family members had said their goodbyes, the body was carried by the men toward the cemetery. The dead man’s name was Rustamov Munir Zalbegovitch. He was forty years old.

Abraham Arabchanov, a local teacher and imam, estimates that thousands of men from Tabasaranskiy Rayon are serving in Ukraine. Thirty were from his village—Novoe Ledzshi. Arabchanov’s son, Kemran, died in March, leaving behind a wife and two daughters. A banner was hung in his memory.

Arabchanov, who wore a gray suit and a prayer cap, spoke about Imam Shamil, who fought against Russia for thirty years. “When Imam Shamil got to know Russia, he said that, if he’d known that Russia was such a powerful country, he would not have fought against it,” he said. Arabchanov thought Putin was “a strong man.” But he also said that, when he was at the local military commissariat, the people there complained that they couldn’t keep up with their work: too many soldiers were dying. At his mosque, some of the congregants claimed that Putin had made up a reason to attack Ukraine. Arabchanov was convinced that Russia was defending itself, but he knew the soldiers were seeing horrible things. Recently, he said, two men from the area had returned from Ukraine alive, only to hang themselves.

Rasul and Khadizhat Saikumov accept the Order of Courage awarded to Makhach. They received financial compensation from the government, and donated some of it to another grieving family.

On a Monday in late June, Rasul and Khadizhat drove to Buynaksk, the local administrative center, to receive an Order of Courage on behalf of Makhach. In their Lada station wagon, with a “Z” sign made of duct tape on the rear window, Khadizhat, in a black dress and head covering, said that she planned to bring Makhach’s medal to her classroom, to demonstrate how heroically he had died. “I have to educate patriots,” she said, “not those who run away.” She added that several people from their area who had declined military service had been shunned by the community.

Khadizhat told me that the family had received significant financial compensation for Makhach’s death: thirteen million rubles, equivalent to about two hundred and forty thousand dollars. But she had already spent most of the money—on an apartment in Makhachkala for Makhach’s younger brother, who also serves in the army; on livestock and berries for the village; on charity for other women who had lost their sons. The government also paid for her to attend this year’s hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. It was her first time making the journey.

At the town hall, she and Rasul waited for the mayor in a stuffy room around a large conference table. Another family who had lost their son sat nearby. The mayor seemed to have forgotten about the ceremony. When he finally arrived, many minutes late, the room was stifling. Rasul sat with his head tilted, eyes on the ground. To his left, a man from the military commissariat began to speak with the air of routine. “By Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 174 of March 31, 2022,” he read, “Sergeant Saikumov Makhach Rasulovitch is awarded the Order of Courage, posthumously.” The mayor stood to give Rasul the medal, but Rasul remained seated. He gave Khadizhat a nudge with his elbow. She took the medal into her hands and burst into tears.