Scenes from a fallen empire: Abandoned Russian bases dot Mongolia’s border

Bayantal, Mongolia: Oyunbileg Dambii remembers when the Russian officers came. They brought money, guns and planes to this fertile land in southern Mongolia.

“It was nice,” the goat and sheep herder says. “You could barter things, you could exchange small goods here and there.”

Between Mongolian fields of green, the Russians built apartment blocks for servicemen in the middle of nowhere, erected statues of Soviet heroes and paved airstrips aimed not at the west or the east, but to the south, towards China.

The Soviet Union had reached its peak. March 14, 1979, reads the Russian broadsheet now peeling from the walls of the abandoned airforce base in Bayantal. Pravda reported that long-range television broadcasting capabilities had successfully been installed on a satellite orbiting 40,000 kilometres above the Earth. In Moscow, preparations were underway for the 109th anniversary of the birth of revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.

“Then they got kicked out,” says Dambii, who has spent all of his 64 years tending to the fields of Bayantal, where children gallop past on horses at 50 kilometres an hour, straight into sleeting rain.

Moscow shrank as Beijing’s influence grew. One by one the bunkers filled with warplanes emptied. The runways that once countered the threat of China grew green with moss, the apartments with mildew.

Now a family of four, their dog and a yurt guards the entry to the last vestiges of a fallen military power, whose domain once stretched to the Chinese border but now struggles to maintain its own frontline in Ukraine.

“Russians are stupid,” says one of the base’s guards, who asks not to be identified because they are not authorised to speak publicly.

Mongolian herder Oyunbileg Dambii inside a Russian military bunker that once housed armoured vehicles.Credit: Sanghee Liu

Dambii uses a bunker once filled with 20 Russian armoured vehicles as a shelter for his 200 goats and 800 sheep. The rent is five sheep a year paid to the local council. “It works really well,” he says. “It keeps them warm”.

Nearby, children play football on the rooftops of buildings where posters of revolutionaries once hung.

“I wish they would demolish it,” says 15-year-old Ermuun Enkhbayar. “It’s f---- ugly.”

Children play football at an abandoned Russian airbase in Mongolia. Credit: Sanghee Liu

Mongolia, like other states with deep links to the former Soviet Union, is wrestling with its ongoing ties to Moscow. It is divided into generations who were educated in Russian and those now learning in English. By those who believe they owe a debt of gratitude to the Russians that gave some of them running water and heating, and those appalled by what they are seeing unfold in Ukraine.

“This nation is squeezed,” says the leader of Mongolia’s youth-focused third party, HUN, Togmidyn Dorjkhand. “We are very opposed to this situation in Ukraine.”

At the height of its power in the 1970s, more than 50,000 Russian troops were stationed in Mongolia across half-a-dozen bases, accompanying 1800 tanks and 190 planes. By 1992 they were all gone. Older generations remember them fondly, but Russia’s war in Ukraine has damaged Mongolia’s rapidly modernising economy by restricting fuel, flights and goods to a younger generation that has become reliant on international supply chains.

“With the global economic fallout from Russia’s protracted invasion of Ukraine showing no sign of ceasing, Mongolian families, farmers and businesses will continue to feel the squeeze,” said Oyuntugs Davaakhuu, a researcher at the Economic Research Institute of Mongolia.

Increasingly, as Russia’s power has diminished, Mongolia has made its economy dependent on the emerging superpower to its south.

China now buys 90 per cent of Mongolia’s exports, mostly coal and other resources. But its economic support has done little to sway public opinion in a country that remains rooted in its own ethnocentrism, independence and history.

“The Chinese are picking us little by little,” says Tsendkhorloo Erdnebaatar, 56, a paver who has broken down in the eastern Gobi Desert with her family, on her way to a local service station.

“I’m very afraid of what will become of the younger generation.”

Tesndkhorloo Erdnebaatar in the Gobi desert just north of the Chinese border. Credit: Sanghee Liu

Gantugs Begzsuren, who sources 95 per cent of his products from China for his store on the Chinese border, cannot bring himself to contemplate stronger economic ties with his southern neighbour.

“It will be very difficult if there is more Chinese influence in Mongolia,” says the phone shop owner in Zaamin-Uud.

Wary of growing Chinese power, Mongolian ties to Moscow still run deep, even as Russia’s influence crumbles into the landscape.

In the middle of the Gobi Desert sits the remains of a 25-metre pool. The starting blocks rise above the blue tiles and black lines that once marked the lanes of Russian officers’ laps at one of their largest bases near the town of Sainshand.

“It was a living base,” says Erdnebaatar. “Russia is like a big brother. At least they gave us something.”

A Russian pool near Sainshand in the middle of the Gobi desert. Credit: Sanghee Liu

For younger Mongolians, the loyalty of their parents is being tested by the Russian recruitment drives which have targeted minorities and sent them straight to the frontline, including Buryats - ethnic Mongolians living in Siberia.

“There were a lot of young men who came through here, some of them with their families,” says Uyanga Otgonbaatar, who runs a store in Altanbulag on the Mongolian-Russian border in the country’s north.

They bought flour, eschewed Vodka, and talked little, she says. They wanted to get out before it was too late.

Shopkeeper Uyanga Otgonbaatar at the Mongolian-Russian border. Credit: Sanghee Liu

“They were fearful,” says Dashdondog Gankhuyag, who runs one of three money exchanges in Altanbulag.

At one stage the rouble was so volatile she could no longer afford to exchange large sums of the Russian currency for Mongolian tugrik.

“They were scared they were going to be sent to the front line quickly,” she says. “We feel close to them because they are like us.”

In Altanbulag, 1000 kilometres north of the Chinese border, Beijing is already making long-term investments.

The highway that leads to Russia is being built by the Chinese government. “China Aid” the sign reads into Khyagt, the Russian border town.

The Chinese government is building the Altanbulag Border Port at the Russian border. Credit: Sanghee Liu

Chinese construction workers who were not authorised to speak publicly said Mongolia donated 30,000 sheep to China to help with widespread meat shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the Chinese government is paying Mongolia back.

When it is finished this year, the four-lane highway will be able to carry much more than sheep.

Mongolia’s pastures provide a clear view of the geopolitics playing out between Beijing and Moscow since Russia shocked the world by invading Ukraine last year. That great game extends across the Eurasian landmass, and beyond.

Mongolians walk over a bridge looking over Russian Siberia. Credit: Sanghee Liu

China has repeatedly maintained its neutrality in the war and declared its “unbreakable bond” with Russia while taking economic and diplomatic advantage of Moscow’s misfortune.

“China is increasingly a power in Europe,” said Andrew Michta a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.

A Mongolian soldier guards the Mongolian-Russian border. Credit: Sanghee Liu

Michta cites the series of recent high-level visits to China by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen - all with the explicit purpose of lobbying China to use its economic leverage over Russia to end the war in Ukraine, turning Beijing into a major diplomatic power.

China also stands to benefit from cheap Russian energy that has few other export markets, transfers of military technology, the weakening of Russia’s borders and internal political turmoil.

“A protracted war of attrition in Ukraine serves Beijing’s interests in that it will lead to the long-term weakening of Russia, thereby fundamentally shifting the Sino-Russian power balance decisively in China’s favour for years to come,” he said.

Michta believes an extreme collapse of Russian power could see Russia’s central and eastern parts becoming subject to Chinese demand for resources, “or as unlikely as it might seem now - even colonisation”.

In Bayantal, Dambii says some Russians visit the abandoned bases in Mongolia to see the remains of Russia’s former glory.

“Maybe they go home a little heartbroken,” he says.