Putin’s Nationality Policy Council to Operate on Basis for Five Commissions

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 3 – Last month, Vladimir Putin created a Presidential Council for Inter-Nationality Relations, a step that raised new questions about the Kremlin leader’s plans while providing few answers (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/12/moscow-tries-yet-another-bureaucratic.html).

            Now at least some of those have been answered because the council has announced that it will operate on the basis of five commissions and given the names of those who will head them (nazaccent.ru/content/45011-kto-vozglavil-komissii-soveta-po-mezhnacionalnym-otnosheniyam-pri-prezidente-rf/).

            The commissions and their heads are as follows:

·       The Commission on Questions about Strengthening All-Russian Civic Identity will be headed by Mari El senator Konstantin Kosachev.

·       The Commission on Issues Regarding the Preservation of the Ethno-Cultural and Linguistic Diversity of Russia will be headed by Ildar Gilmutdinov, a Duma deputy from Tatarstan.

·       The Commission on Issues of Legislation Securing International Concord and the Prevention of Extremism will be headed by Stavropol Duma deputy Vladimir Ivanov.

·       The Commission on Issues of Information and Inter-National Cooperation will be headed by Ara Abramyan, head of the Union of Armenians of Russia.

·       And the Commission on Regional Aspects of State Nationality Policy and the Development of Social Institutions will be headed by Vladimir Zorin of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology.

How active each of these will be remains to be seen, but it is already obvious that each will be controversial among at least some ethnic groups in the Russian Federation. Moscow’s decision to appoint an Armenian to head one of them may be the most controversial in the short term, but Kosachev’s appointment is likely to spark more dissent over time.