North Ossetia Unilaterally Shifting Border at Ingushetia’s Expense, Ramzan Tsurov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 24 – Having suffered the indignity of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s collusion with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov and having lost 26,000 hectares of Ingush land as a result, the Ingush people are now at risk from Yevkurov’s inaction: Because he is doing nothing, Ramzan Tsurov says, North Ossetia is unilaterally extending its border into more Ingush land.

            Tsurov, a leading Ingush poet who is the author of the republic’s national anthem, expresses his concerns on Facebook that the Zamanho portal has reposted in a provocatively entitled essay “With Such Neighbors, One doesn’t Need Enemies,” an indication that he and it see what is happening with North Ossetia as leading to more protests (zamanho.com/?p=8177).

                “In the absence of any work by the Ingush powers that be,” he writes, “Ossetia has unilaterally extended its border to include a significant part of Ingush territory in the district of the Stolovaya Mountain.”  This has happened because “for ten years, the Republic of Ingushetia has been without a leader, without a Parliament, without anything.”

                Meanwhile, there were three other Ingush and Ingushetia-related developments today. First, Ruslan Mutsolgov, the leader of the MASHR human rights organization, said he and his group would continue to operate even as officials bring various charges against both. His lawyer adds they will appeal the charges (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/335819/).

            Second, the Ingusehetia authorities have told Murad Dskiyev, who is functioning as acting president of the Union of Teips of the Ingush People, that he faces additional charges and have called him in for further interrogation (mbk-news.appspot.com/news/glavu-soveta-tejpov/ and zamanho.com/?p=8185).

            And third, rumors that Moscow was going to put Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov in charge of the entire North Caucasus, rumors that Kadyrov himself quickly denied, sparked concerns across the region (iarex.ru/news/66686.html and capost.media/news/policy/kadyrov-otvetil-na-slukhi-o-ego-ukhode-s-posta-glavy-chechni-/).

            Given Kadyrov’s authoritarian style and aggressive promotion of Chechnya’s interests at the expense of his neighbors, there would be no better way for Moscow to promote an explosion across the North Caucasus than to put him in charge. He and Putin might try to drown such an explosion in blood, given their preferred modus operandi; but they would almost certainly lose.