Chechnya’s Kadyrov Re-Igniting Yet Another Border Dispute, This Time with Stavropol Kray

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 15 – Having acted on Vladimir Putin’s call for demarcating the borders of federal subjects more actively than anyone else, Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, who has already triggered massive protests in Ingushetia and resistance in Daghestan, has now turned his attentions to Stavropol Kray, which unlike the other two is predominantly ethnic Russian.

            In January of this year, Kadyrov wrote on his VKontakte page that talks with Stavropol about demarcating the border between their two federal subjects were going well and more than that were “approaching their logical end,” an agreement (vk.com/wall279938622_357508). But the situation is actually more complicated and potentially explosive than that.

            Ruslan Romanov, a journalist for the Paragraphs.online portal, says that any talk about the Chechen-Stavropol border has the effect of reopening discussions about two districts within Chechnya that had been part of Stavropol in the past, discussions that have become wrapped up in local politics in both places (paragraphs.online/article/328-demarkatsiya-granits-kak-na-stavropole-sobirayutsya-otvetit-kadyrovu).

            Last fall, Sergey Popov, currently the ataman of the Caucasus Cossack Line, said that any demarcation of the Stavropol-Chechen border would give Russians and Cossacks the right to demand the return of those two districts (newstracker.ru/news/politics/23-10-2018/kazaki-potrebovali-ot-glavy-stavropolya-izmenit-granitsu-s-chechenskoy-respublikoy).

            In doing so, Popov was only reiterating what Valerey Zerenkov, the governor of Stavropol in 2012, had said six years earlier, a declaration that sparked an angry rejoinder from the Chechens but did not lead to any serious protests or talks then (qna.center/question/849569 and chechnyatoday.com/content/view/22460).

            Stavropol commentator Nikolay Bondarenko says that talk about getting back the two districts from Chechnya surfaces whenever there are political crises in the kray and thus interacts with them.  Popov opposes the current governor and thus is using the same tactic, but if Chechnya makes demands, the two things could easily interact and grow in force.

            Statements Popov has made, Romanov says, fully confirm that observation. And the ataman’s background and political aspirations suggest he is quite ready to exploit any increase in tensions with Chechnya to his own benefit. 

            In 1995, he was a mediator in Russian talks with Basayev at Budennovsk; and inn 1996, he worked to free Russian hostages in Chechnya. He subsequently worked for seven years as an advisor to the presidential plenipotentiary of the Southern Federal District on ethnic issues and combatting extremism.

            Today, he is well connected in Moscow and enjoys the support of many Russian nationalists as a result of his own agenda and willingness to write open letters to Vladimir Putin. (For an example of that, see pdsnpsr.ru/regional_news/v-rossii/obrashhenie-atamana-kavkazskoj-kazachej-linii_21052018).

            Popov has been an active supporter of plans to amalgamate non-Russian regions with larger Russian ones and clearly fears that the Kremlin is now offering Kadyrov the chance to move in the opposite direction as a kind of payment given the financial stringencies under which the federal center is operating. 

Many like Bondarenko dismiss this as conspiracy thinking, but the expansion of the Chechen population at the expense of Russians and Cossacks in the two disputed districts and into Stavropol Kray itself feeds such attitudes, Romanov says.  Indeed, many think “Chechnya is gradually advancing on the territory of the kray without any demarcation of borders.”

According to the Paragraphs journalist, however, Stavropol faces larger challenges from other non-Caucasian groups, including the Ingush, the Daghestanis, the Ossetins, the Karachays, and the Balkars. And any concession to them would open the Circassian issue to the west as well.

Stavropol leaders clearly want to avoid opening this Pandora’s box, but if Kadyrov makes demands, there are those within the kray’s borders, like Popov, who are more than ready to take up the challenge, a development that could mean that the latest border fight would be not between one non-Russian group and another but between a non-Russian group and the Russians.