Bashkir

The protest, driven by tensions between indigenous Bashkir people and ethnic Russians, raised the specter of new cultural and nationalist divisions.

Bashkir singer Altynai Valitov was visited by local authorities in Ufa after he put out a call on Instagram for protests to take place both in Bashkortostan and elsewhere in Russia.

Alsynov, the convicted activist, was a leader of a group that advocated the preservation of the Bashkir language and culture and protested against limestone and gold mining operations in the region.

Hundreds of protesters clashed with the police on Wednesday in the provincial town of Baymak, near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, after a local court sentenced an advocate for the local Bashkir ethnic minority to four years in prison.

Mr. Alsynov had called for greater cultural and economic autonomy for the predominantly Muslim Bashkir people of Russia’s Ural Mountains.