A leading Kalmyk activist whom Mongolian officials did not allow to enter their country because his Russian passport had expired has left Ulan Bator international airport for the United States.
The #1ROOT and #NoWar groups said on March 1 that Batyr Boromangnaev, the deputy chairman of Kalmyk’s self-governing Congress of the Oirat-Kalmyk people and former leader of the Yabloko party’s branch in Kalmykia, was allowed to leave Mongolia for the United States. It is unclear how and under what conditions Boromangnaev was allowed to travel to the United States.
Former Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj placed a video on Twitter on March 1 showing Boromangnaev leaving the airport's gates with an added caption: "Good-bye, Hero."
A day earlier, Boromangnaev told RFE/RL that his passport expired while he was temporarily detained in Kazakhstan, which he passed through en route to Mongolia.
According to Boromangnaev, Mongol authorities tried to deport him to Kazakhstan, the last country he was in before arriving in Mongolia, but the move was postponed until March 2 after he filed a request addressed to the chief of the Mongolia's Border Guard Service not to deport him.
The Congress of the Oirat-Kalmyk people has regularly coordinated Kalmyk activists' congresses in Russia's Republic of Kalmykia near the North Caucasus region since 2015.
After Russia launched its ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most of the group's members fled the country.
In October 2022, Boromangnaev's group published a declaration on Kalmykia's independence from Russia.
The influx of Russian citizens, mostly of Kalmyk, Buryat, and Tyvan origin, to Mongolia has dramatically increased since President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization to support the war in Ukraine in late September last year.
Kalmyks in Russia's southwest and Buryats in Siberia are mostly Buddhist, Mongol-speaking ethnic groups. Tyvans are another mostly Buddhist indigenous people in Siberia, whose language is Turkic.