Extreme Right ‘Russian Community’ Becoming Active in Circassian Areas

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 2 – The extreme right Russian nationalist organization, the Russian Community, already the largest Russian nationalist group in the country, involved in suppressing non-Russian groups across the country, and the source many fear for complecting the regional militias Moscow is allowing is now becoming active in Circassian areas.

            (For background on this group and the fears it is provoking among non-Russians, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/russian-community-now-largest-extreme.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/clashes-between-ethnic-diasporas-and.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/moscow-gives-heads-of-all-federal.html.)

            The Circassian National Front reports that “the first branches of this nationalist group have opened in Kabardino-Balkaria (Nalchik) and Karachayevo-Cherkessia (Cherkessk). In Krasnodarsk Kray and Adygeya (Maikop), the Russian Community has already been functioning for several years” (t.me/cirnatfront/50).

            Some members of the Russian Community in these regions are flying the notorious Bakalanov flag which was used by Russian irregulars at the end of the Circassian war, and the Circassian National Front fears that the appearance of this group with such flags means that Russian nationalists hope to “extinguish” the Circassian nation on its homeland.

            However that may be, the appearance of the Russian Community in Circassian areas almost certainly is going to spark more conflicts in the binational republics of the central North Caucasus, republics that in recent months have seen a significant rise in ethnic tensions (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/islamist-radicalism-continues-to-spread.html).