The big problem there.... I'm so glad you raised this question, but it's something that we have not been addressing. The Russian group is called the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, RAIPON. About 2014, right when the Russians were moving into Ukraine at the start of the war, and when Putin was of course centralizing, he also engineered the takeover of RAIPON.
RAIPON is no longer, as understood, the voice for Russian indigenous peoples. Rather, what has happened is that this board has been basically made up of Russian government supporters or Russian government people. In fact, if you look at RAIPON's statement about the second phase of the Ukrainian war, back in February 2022, you will see that RAIPON issued a statement in full support of the Russian state intervention into Ukraine, accusing Ukraine of the Russian propaganda, Ukraine being a fascist state and all of the other justifications that the Russians have, of course, given.
Have we seen anything in terms of China trying to take advantage of that? To my knowledge, there's no evidence whatsoever of it. It would be difficult, but probably not impossible in this context. Once again, given the control that the Russian state now has of any NGOs, never mind just those on the indigenous side, it would be something of a challenge. It's something, of course, that we in the west have tended to overlook when we are talking about what has happened in the Arctic. RAIPON no longer speaks for the indigenous northern Russian people, in my assessment. They speak for the Russian state.