China’s Russian Town Has Log Cabins and Cyrillic Signs, but No Russians

China’s Russian Town Has Log Cabins and Cyrillic Signs, but No Russians

The New York Timesworld

Key Points:

  • President Vladimir Putin has been engaged in a nearly four-year conflict in Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking citizens with cultural and familial ties to Russia.
  • Far to the east, Russia has lost a historic cultural foothold in northern China, where a remote ethnic Russian township exists more in name than in population.
  • The Enhe township in Inner Mongolia, China, was established to preserve the traditions of China's small Russian minority but now lacks actual ethnic Russians.
  • The township features Russian cultural elements like birch trees, log cabins, Cyrillic script, and vodka, yet its residents are mostly descendants of Russians rather than ethnic Russians themselves.