Émigré-Founded Ingushetia Independence Committee has Support at Home and Authorities are Unwittingly Spreading Its Influence

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 15 – So many non-Russian émigrés are declaring on the Internet that they have formed national liberation movements in their homelands that the question naturally arises as to how much support they have beyond their own ranks abroad. Many may have little or none, but the actions of the authorities in Ingushetia suggest they may have more than many imagine.

            On February 14, officials of the Center for Countering Extremism, a department of the Ingushetia interior ministry, visited the father of a prominent Ingush activist and asked him to provide evidence of his son’s links to the Ingushetia Independence Committee formed only last month (fortanga.org/2023/02/sotrudniki-czentra-e-vyzvali-na-dopros-otcza-aktivista-po-podozreniyu-v-svyazi-s-komitetom-ingushskoj-nezavisimosti/).

            (For background on what little is known at preent about the Committee, see fortanga.org/2023/01/deokkupacziya-i-polnaya-nezavisimost-chto-izvestno-o-sozdanii-komiteta-ingushskoj-nezavisimosti-za-rubezhom/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/pskov-region-emigre-activists-follow.html.)

             The activist himself, Ruslan Iouloy, denied that he was connected to the committee but said he shared its goals. He further suggested that the actions of the authorities against his father were part and parcel of their efforts to discredit and silence him but that they would not succeed in doing so.

            This report suggests both that while the Committee may not have a network in Ingushetia at present, the position it has adopted is one that has sympathy among portions of the population of that North Caucasus republic and that the authorities in trying to suppress it by such heavy-handed ways may be doing more to spread its influence than almost anyone else.