Zarema Gasanova, an Indigenous Avar from the republic of Dagestan, was working as a nurse in a St. Petersburg clinic when Moscow ordered its troops over the border with Ukraine. At that moment, Gasanova, herself eligible for the draft, said she “could no longer stay on the sidelines.” The Moscow Times spoke with the nurse-turned-Indigenous-activist about her career change, the benefits of activism in exile, rising xenophobia against people from the Caucasus in Russia and Dagestan’s future. MT: When did you decide to turn from the medical trade to activism? ZG: I was always politically conscious. I remember following Boris Nemtsov’s 2008 presidential campaign, being shocked by the anti-NATO hysteria amid the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and watching Alexei Navalny’s investigations in the late 2010s.
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