Ingush Anger at Moscow Leads to Unprecedented Rise Draft Avoidance in the Republic

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 16 – Unlike last year when more than 12,000 young Ingush men competed for space among the 1,000 drafted from the republic, this year, reflecting mounting anger at Moscow for its obvious tilt toward Chechnya, 35 percent of those called up have sought to avoid service and officials say the republic may not meet its quota.

            The situation in Ingushetia stands in marked contrast to that in Chechnya and Dagehstan where the military commissariats have had no difficulty in meeting their quotas and have had to turn many young men who want to get their military “ticket” away (kavkaz.versia.ru/v-ingushetii-pod-sryvom-okazalas-prizyvnaya-kompanii).

            As the Kavkaz-Uzel news agency put it in reporting this development, “military service is no longer the fashion in Ingushetia.” It did not say that this was the direct result of popular anger about the border accord republic head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov signed with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov but that seems to be the most probable explanation.

            Three other developments related to the Ingush-Chechen border dispute during the last 24 hours were:

·         The Russian Constitutional Court said that the top leadership of both Ingushetia and Chechnya must appear at its November 27 hearing of the case concerning the border accord (realnoevremya.ru/news/120431-kadyrova-i-evkurova-priglasili-v-sud-po-delu-o-granice-chechni-i-ingushetii).

·         Reports that an Ingush was forced to apologize to Yevkurov for his criticism by masked and armed men continued to spark controversy with some Ingush seeing this as a dangerous reflection of the spread of the habits of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and others dismissing it as a one-time event that doesn’t mean very much (sobesednik.ru/politika/20181116-trebovanie-izvinenij-pered-evkurovym-ili-provokaciya-ili-durost).

·         The two sides in the dispute worked to keep the debate very much alive with Yevkurov announcing that those who moved into the areas near the new borders with Chechnya would receive special government assistance and his opponents announcing a subbotnik for tomorrow in the lands that are slated to be transferred to Chechnya (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327992/  and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327984/).