Ingush Village Assembly Votes Unanimously Against Yevkurov’s Border Accord with Chechnya

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 27 – Residents of the Ingush village of Karabulak voted unanimously against the border accord Yunus-Bek Yevkurov signed with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov at the end of September, yet another indication that this issue isn’t going away and that when protests resume next week, they may be as large or larger than before (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327194/).

            That suggests the Yevkurov’s efforts to win over the population are failing; and it also highlights the way in which visits to Ingushetia in recent days by Ramzan Kadyrov and other Chechen officials are not calming the situation but instead raising tensions still further (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327186/, kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327192/  and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327187/).

            Ingush activists and ordinary residents appear to be offended by the imperial way in which Kadyrov behaves, with enormous lines of cars and his obvious assumption that he has the complete right to come and lecture them on why they should give Chechnya far more land -- by some estimates, 27 times as much as Chechnya is giving to their republic.

            Meanwhile, two other nearby border disputes continue to bubble. In Daghestan, leaders of the Chechen-Akintsy say that they are not interested in having their region become part of Chechnya. That would reduce the status of Chechens who live in other areas of the republic by inflaming opinion against them (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327202/).

            But they do say there is one condition that must be met for them to want to remain in Daghestan: Makhachkala must restore their territorial autonomy, something they have long demanded, that has sometimes been promised, but that as of now remains unfulfilled. If it isn’t done now, they tell Kavkaz-Uzel, they may change their mind on changing the border. 

            And in Stavropol Kray, disputes have broken out among various Cossack groups over the demand of some of them to seek the return of territory now within the borders of Chechnya to Stavropol and to Cossack control. Some Cossacks favor that idea; others don’t, with the roots of the dispute going back decades (newstracker.ru/article/general/27-10-2018/kazaki-protiv-kazakov-chem-zakonchitsya-peredel-granits-na-severnom-kavkaze