> How do you explain why the vast majority of Russian losses in Ukraine are ethnic minorities, if not with racism?

Easily. First, the claim about the vast majority of losses is likely not supported by any verifiable data. MediaZona [0] data does show high figures in Buryatia and Dagestan regions, but Orenburg, Kuban, Stavropol, Chelyabinsk region, are all predominantly populated by Russians.

However, what this map of losses does show, is that the poorer the region is, the more losses it has.

Except for the first wave of personnel sent to Ukraine, many of whom didn't really sign up for the invasion, prior to mobilization nobody was forced to fight in this war*. They are all paid contractors (aka mercenaries) who are paid an approx $3K per month. This is not a lot for people from rich regions, but an insane amount for people from poor regions.

Now, let's look at the regions: The general rule in Russia is that the further you are from the centre, the poorer the region is, except oil/gas rich regions (Tatarstan, Tuymen, etc). Naturally, the further you go from Moscow, you also encounter fewer Russians and more local ethnicities.

Now, a person willing to find racism everywhere would exclaim, "a-ha, Russian racists don't develop provinces with ethnic minorities!" And would be very wrong. The thing is, the maps of development and russian population percentage don't really match. Moscow has fewer Russians percentage (45%) than in dirt-poor neighbouring regions like Tver or Vladimir (~90%), and ethnic-heavy Tatarstan is one of the richest regions.

Another factor is urbanization and population structure. The more urbanized the region is, the fewer birth rate it has. Russians mostly live in very urbanized regions, and have very few children. People in Buryatia live in rural areas, and generally have many more children. And people in Dagestan have many many more people than anywhere in the country.

So mix two and two: Russians are a majority, yet, they generally live in cities, have fewer children, and approximately half of them live in better developed regions. This naturally draws poorer people from rural areas to become mercenaries, and more of them die. It isn't some kind of intentional policy, just the way the things are.

Btw, now that the country is mobilizing, I expect the casualties to even out between regions, so casualties of ethnic minorities and Russians will likely resemble the general demographic structure of the country.

Now, to other claims,

> How do you explain those minorities have no representation in government,

This is not true. There approx 82% of Russians in Russian Federation. If we look at the Russian State Government [1], approx 38% of people appear to belong to ethnic minorities (half of them have Ukrainian surnames, btw). So minorities are actually overrepresented in the government.

> It’s entire economy revolves around Moscow parasitizing on everyone else.

This is very true, but there are just 45% of Russians in Moscow. So on average ethnic minorities benefit much more from this 'paraziting on everyone else'.

[0]: https://zona.media/casualties

[1]: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8...