The Utopia of Rights

How the protection of Indigenous peoples works under Russian law

On February 17, 2022, Russian senator Grigory Karasin, speaking at the UN, described the situation of Indigenous peoples in Russia as a stable system of guarantees. According to him, Russian laws “consistently establish” the rights of Indigenous peoples to the priority and free use of land, water, hunting grounds, and other natural resources in places of their traditional residence and economic activity.

This formula sounds like an answer to most concerns: there is a Constitution, there are special federal and regional laws, there are lists of territories, there are support programs, there is compensation for damage. RAIPON, the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North — the largest such organization in Russia — states that the country has three special federal laws on the rights of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North (ISNPN), and that more than 20 additional federal laws contain provisions guaranteeing them special rights. In its new concept for the sustainable development of ISNPN through 2036, the government likewise proceeds from the assumption that “a legal foundation has, on the whole, been created” for protecting the rights and traditional way of life of Indigenous small-numbered peoples.

In a recently published report, we showed, using concrete examples of major infrastructure projects in the Arctic, that in reality this legal framework operates differently than it does on paper. For example, a project can receive a license before an Indigenous community even learns of its consequences.

A regulatory basis for rights protection already exists, but it works selectively — sometimes only after litigation, or when it is already too late. Arctida explains which laws govern the rights of Indigenous peoples in Russia, why protection does not extend to everyone, and where Russian norms diverge from international standards.

The law protects — but not everyone

Russia's system for protecting Indigenous peoples is built around the category of “Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples” (ISNP), which narrows the group of Indigenous peoples down to those recognized by the state as “small-numbered.”

Russia's special legal framework recognizes only the category of ISNP, which includes peoples that meet the formal criterion of a population under 50,000 and are included in a government-approved list, which currently contains 47 peoples. Some Indigenous peoples — for example, the Arctic Sakha, Komi, or Karelians — receive no protection under this system, since they do not formally qualify as ISNP.

In 2020, an additional layer of bureaucracy appeared: a register of Indigenous small-numbered peoples maintained by the Federal Agency for Nationalities Affairs (FADN) — that is, a list of individuals belonging to ISNPN. In principle, this register is meant to help a person confirm their status and simplify the exercise of their rights and access to the support measures they are entitled to. But inclusion in the list requires considerable bureaucratic effort, and sometimes a court ruling. This is especially difficult for someone who lives by subsistence harvesting, leads a nomadic life, or depends on seasonal use of a territory.

But even after obtaining the required status, the exercise of rights is not guaranteed, since another complicated issue arises: the legal status of the land where people live and where a project may be planned.

Where are Indigenous lands?

Russian legislation contains no concept of “Indigenous peoples' lands,” but there are two legal regimes that are often conflated in public discussion:

• places of traditional residence and traditional economic activity (PTR and TEA);

• territories of traditional nature use (TTNU).

PTR and TEA are listed in a single document that inherits the Soviet-era delineation of geographic areas inhabited by Indigenous peoples. It shows where the state recognizes traditional residence and economic activity by ISNP. In addition, it forms the administrative-territorial basis for Indigenous peoples' interaction with other actors, such as authorities, subsoil users, and others. Within such territories, ISNP have additional rights, and in Sakha, for instance, ethnological expertise is required.

TTNU is a stronger regime of “specially protected areas” that can be established within a territory already included in PTR and TEA. Federal law describes them as specially protected areas created for the traditional nature use and way of life of ISNP. TTNU comes closest to the idea of a territory where external economic activity should be limited and coordinated with the interests of Indigenous residents. This implies the creation of territories that cannot be alienated for industrial development unrelated to traditional economic activity without the consent of Indigenous peoples.

In practice, part of the potential of TTNU legislation remains unrealized. Federal TTNUs have effectively not been created for many years, while regional and local ones depend on whether a given region has done the work of establishing and registering them. This last point is critically important, since at the federal level the criteria for dividing authority and the procedure for establishing TTNU are not regulated.

In some regions, such territories do exist and registries are maintained. One example is the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District, where legislation on communal lands appeared even before the federal TTNU law and later largely became its basis. A quarter of the autonomous district was designated as communal lands.

Some regions impose restrictions on creating TTNU — for example, depending on whether subsoil plots, industrial facilities, or leased land parcels are located within the territory. Establishing a TTNU sometimes involves difficulties and litigation. This was the case with the formation of a TTNU in Krasnoyarsk Krai, which was created only after a ruling at the cassation level. In another case, even on a territory that already holds this status, residents have had to sue in order to exercise the rights granted to them by the already-established status.

And even where a TTNU has been established, its boundaries may not coincide with the actual migration routes, pastures, and hunting and fishing grounds used in practice. For example, the territory of Rosneft's large-scale Vostok Oil project in Taymyr does not cross the boundaries of the nearby Popigay TTNU, but, according to staff at the Taymyr Nature Reserve, it does in fact encroach on land actually used by reindeer herders.

To summarize:

1. “Indigenous lands” are established through two legal regimes. Both relate not to land ownership, but to special rights to use it. Territories of traditional nature use are the stronger of the two, but their regulation lacks a settled structure.

2. Regional and local TTNUs can be established under different protocols. Whether they are documented depends on how registration is organized in a given region.

3. In some regions — for example, the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District and Sakha — TTNUs exist and function, but this is not the case everywhere.

4. The establishment of such territories can be restricted because of the presence of subsoil deposits or industrial facilities. TTNUs often fail to reflect the actual realities of Indigenous peoples' lives and do not include all the territories where people actually live.

The Case of the Republic of Sakha

The Republic of Sakha is considered a region with the most advanced standards regarding Indigenous rights in Russia. It is the only relatively systematic example of institutionalizing impact assessment for extractive projects affecting Indigenous peoples. In 2010, the republic introduced ethnological expertise. Unlike a standard environmental impact assessment, this type of review considers not only environment as such, but also how changes will affect the traditional way of life, subsistence activities, culture, and the socioeconomic situation and development of the people in question.

Sakha's experience is often cited as an example of how the Russian system can work better. In addition to the law on ethnological expertise, the republic has well-developed TTNU regulation. Local statutes provide for the participation of Indigenous representatives in expert commissions, and administrative liability has been established for violations of the requirement to conduct such expertise — and these sanctions are actually applied.

A regional program indicates that, as of December 1, 2024, 66 ethnological expert reviews had been conducted in the republic, and TTNUs make up 53.7% of the republic's total area.

The law of the Republic of Sakha is unique in Russia: attempts to institutionalize such a mechanism at the federal level have so far failed. Another region where an attempt was made to introduce ethnological expertise is Chukotka where a regional law On Responsible Subsoil Use was adopted in 2022. It broadly defined standards of conduct for subsoil users and required that the impact of projects on Indigenous peoples be studied through ethnological expertise in accordance with federal legislation. Since the mechanism for such expertise was never established at the federal level, the provision of the Chukotka law remains declarative.

Ethnological expertise is also mentioned in the legislation of Krasnoyarsk Krai. After the major Norilsk oil spill, the region planned, as of 2021, to develop a law on ethnological expertise, but according to available information, it has not been adopted.

The rules for creating TTNUs also differ. In Sakha, regional regulations allow zones of limited industrial activity and other functional zones to be included within a TTNU, provided certain conditions and expert reviews are met. In Krasnoyarsk Krai, by contrast, strict restrictions apply: large TTNUs cannot be established in territories where operating production facilities already exist, and the presence of already-licensed subsoil plots within the proposed boundaries can be grounds for refusal. In the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, an application may be denied if the proposed territory overlaps with land already used by a legal entity for activities unrelated to traditional nature use, or if it includes subsoil plots designated as being of federal significance.

The example of Sakha shows that legislation protecting Indigenous rights can be created and standardized. At the same time, within the Russian context, the republic's example is the exception.

When a Right Is Activated in Court

Even in the Republic of Sakha, rights do not always work automatically.

In 2025, the Seben territorial-neighborhood community of the Even people filed a claim in arbitration court demanding that Prognoz joint-stock company be required to conduct an ethnological expert review of a local-level TTNU. The case concerned a licensed plot in Sakha. The company objected, arguing that the plot held the status of a geological allotment, and that subsoil study within such an allotment can, under certain conditions, be exempt from such review.

The court took a different view. Sakha's law establishes that ethnological expertise is mandatory and must be conducted before decisions are made on carrying out economic activity in places of traditional residence and on TTNU territory. The ruling also noted that the boundaries of the Seben TTNU are defined in the register, and that the fact of the company's activity on this territory was not disputed. As a result, the court ordered the company to take measures to carry out the review.

What matters here is both that ethnological expertise serves as a tool for an Indigenous community to defend its rights, and that even where a TTNU exists, along with a regional law and a mandatory procedure, the community still had to prove in court that the company was required to undergo an assessment of its impact on the community's land.

In another case, involving the gold-mining company Rudnik Tabornyy LLC, the prosecutor's office also sought to compel an ethnological expert review while the company tried to challenge the prosecutorial order. Rudnik Tabornyy was carrying out geological exploration and mineral extraction within the boundaries of the Tyanya National Nasleg municipality, the entire territory of which belongs to an Evenki TTNU. After an appeal from the Association of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of Yakutia, the prosecutor's office determined that the company had not conducted the mandatory ethnological expert review and demanded that the violation be remedied. The company challenged the prosecutorial order, arguing that some of its licenses had been issued before the relevant requirements came into force. The court of first instance sided with the prosecutor's office; the court of appeal sided with the company. Ultimately, the court of cassation upheld the ruling of the first instance, stating that re-registering a license or beginning operations without an expert review does not exempt the subsoil user from the obligation to conduct one.

There are even situations where the review was conducted, but the issue lies in the enforcement of its findings. For example, according to the 2022 report of the Commissioner for the Rights of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the North of the Republic of Sakha, the very first negative conclusion of an ethnological expert review was not properly enforced. The reason given was the lack of clear federal regulation on the enforcement of such findings.

The legal framework that has taken shape in the republic is a successful example, but full implementation is hampered by a lack of enforcement mechanisms, as well as by the failure to translate the republic's good practices into federal legislative norms.

A License for the Subsoil, a Life on the Surface

The Land Code of the Russian Federation provides no guarantee against the alienation of lands used for traditional nature use, and the right to use subsoil is not equivalent to the right to land: the two are legally separated.

A license to use subsoil as a state resource (for geological study, exploration, or extraction) is issued through a separate procedure. Such a license does not grant rights to the land plot on the surface — to construction, the placement of facilities, roads, or infrastructure.

On paper, this separation might look like a safeguard: the company has not yet obtained the land, so further approvals presumably lie ahead. But it also works the other way. Holding a subsoil-use license, a company may not need to coordinate what will be built on the surface, including not engaging with Indigenous communities on the ground. A decision on subsoil use can be made before a community receives full information about the project and its consequences.

This creates a gap between the moment a decision is made and the point at which an Indigenous community gets a chance to influence the project. This example illustrates why the public hearings required under Russian law — which allow for non-binding comments — are insufficient. The international principle of free, prior, and informed consent is not reducible to being informed and submitting comments. On the contrary, it requires that a project be discussed in advance, free of pressure, in a culturally adapted form, with Indigenous peoples' own representative institutions, giving them the opportunity to say “no.” No such mandatory federal mechanism exists in Russian law for extractive and infrastructure projects.

What Remains Outside the Frame

Russian officials are right about one thing: a legal foundation does indeed exist. Its mere existence is presented as proof of adequate protection, even though it does not meet international standards and, in implementation, is imperfect and not fully developed — and the situation varies from region to region. General guarantees still require the implementation of strong legal mechanisms that would correct the power asymmetry between enormous corporations and Indigenous communities engaged in traditional economic activity.

Such mechanisms have been developed in international instruments on the rights of Indigenous peoples. The UN Declaration speaks of the right of Indigenous peoples to determine priorities for the development of their lands and resources, and of the need to obtain free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) before approving projects that affect their territories. ILO Convention No. 169, which Russia has not ratified but which Russian companies' documentation routinely cites, establishes states' obligations regarding consultation with, and the participation of, Indigenous peoples in decisions that affect them. The Convention on Biological Diversity requires respect for the knowledge and practices of Indigenous and local communities and calls for encouraging the equitable distribution of benefits arising from their use.

The Russian system is structured predominantly to be reactive. It can be set in motion only after a project has already received its license, after a community has discovered a threat, after a dispute has arisen, after the matter has had to go to court, after the harm has become a subject of compensation.

Some ideas in keeping with international standards are present in Russia in fragmentary form: in TTNU legislation, in Yakutia's practice of ethnological expertise, in the advisory standard of responsibility for residents of the Arctic zone. But they do not come together into a single, universally binding system within which an Indigenous community could not merely receive compensation, but determine in advance whether a project is acceptable and under what conditions. The amount of compensation, meanwhile, is shaped through arrangements with the company, the fairness of which no one regulates.

Despite the existence of laws on Indigenous small-numbered peoples, Indigenous communities — even those that fall under this category — are still forced to prove their right to be heard at a point when the decision about the future of their land has, in effect, already been made.

Cover photo by E. Mitroshin / Depositphotos

Authors:

Alesia Sashkova

Arctida Analyst