The leader of Russia’s Bashkir region on Thursday condemned calls for “separatism” and threatened tough sanctions, a day after street protests that led to clashes with law enforcement shook the republic, which is home to a large Muslim and Turkic-speaking community, AFP reported.

“A group of people, some of whom live abroad and are actually traitors, demand the separation of Bashkiria from Russia. They are calling for a partisan war,” Radi Khabirov said in Telegram.

An investigation has been opened for very serious crimes, for “mass riots”, with long imprisonment,” he emphasized, promising to “not tolerate extremism.”

Clashes broke out on Wednesday between police and several thousand people who gathered outside the courthouse to express support for regional dissident Fail Alsynov, who condemned Moscow’s attack on Ukraine.

An activist who, in particular, fights against the exploitation of energy resources, was sentenced to four years in prison for “inciting hatred” in a closed-door sentence in the town of Baymak, not far from neighboring Kazakhstan. .

According to the specialized non-governmental organization “OVD-Info”, an organization that the Russian state classifies as a “foreign agent”, demonstrators in Baymak were dispersed with tear gas, and about twenty people were arrested.

Such an outburst of street anger has become rare in Russia, where any criticism of the government is punishable by prison terms.

The last large-scale demonstrations took place in the fall of 2022, during the mobilization campaign of hundreds of thousands of reservists, in other words, civilians to strengthen the ranks of the army deployed in Ukraine.

According to official statistics, Bashkirs and Tatars, two Turkish-speaking Muslim minorities, make up more than half of Bashkiria’s population.

According to independent media, as in many poor regions of Russia, Bashkiria has the largest number of soldiers killed on the front lines in Ukraine.