People attend a birthday party of a local man of influence. They drink the Kalmyk tea, which was historically made with pressed green or black tea (now substituted with the regular leaf tea), and brewed with butter, milk, and salt. Out of 267.000 people who live in the republic, more than half are ethnically Kalmyks. Ethnically Russians take second place with around 30% of the republic's population, and the rest are Kazakhs, Dargins, Avars, Chechens, Turks, Ukrainians and other ethnicities. Despite the ethnic groups being somewhat closed — i.e. Russians tend to distance themselves from Kalmyks and vice versa — there are no significant reports on tension or racially motivated crimes.