Paul Goble
Staunton, June 10 – Ten leading opposition figures in Kabardino-Balkaria have called on the republic parliament to reject a call by the republic procuracy to take out of the republic constitution all references to the right of the republic and its people to guarantee the territorial integrity of Kabardino-Balkaria.
On June 2, the republic procuracy called on the parliament to remove from the republic constitution five provisions which specified that the republic and its people are guaranteed the right to the territorial integrity of their republic (semnasem.org/news/2026/06/11/pravozashitniki-prizvali-ne-udalyat-iz-konstitucii-kabardino-balkarii-punkt-o-territorialnoj-celostnosti).
The parliament agreed to take up this appeal, and that sparked ten leading opposition and public figures in the republic to warn that agreeing to the procurator’s demand to bring the republic into correspondence with the Russian basic law could backfire and threaten the country as a whole (zapravakbr.ru/kollektivnoe-zayavlenie-k-glave-i-deputatam-kbr-protiv-trebovaniya-prokuratury/).
According to the declaration of the ten, “The decision adopted by the Parliament is deeply flawed and poses a danger to the future of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic as a constituent entity of the Russian Federation. We insist on preserving the constitutional guarantees of the republic’s statehood and territorial integrity.”
It continues: “While the President of the Russian Federation ensures the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation as a unified federal state, this does not preclude constituent entities from enshrining guarantees of their territorial integrity—as an integral part of the unified state—within their own constitutions.”
And therefore, the authors say, “Removing the provisions establishing the principle of territorial integrity from the Constitution of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic is the most destructive aspect of the proposed amendments. If the provision regarding the inviolability of the republic's territory is eliminated, the federal center would gain the legal authority to alter the republic's borders unilaterally.”
“Such a turn of events could lead to the following consequences:the transfer of territories—inhabited for centuries by Kabardians, Balkars, and other peoples—to neighboring constituent entities of the Russian Federation; the abolition or redrawing of historically established national districts under the guise of ‘the interests of the Federation;’ and the loss of the republic's final constitutional safeguard against arbitrary changes to its territorial structure at the discretion of the federal center.”
The authors of the appeal say that “we cannot allow the Basic Law of Kabardino-Balkaria to remain silent on the issue of the inviolability of the republic's territory. This is not a matter of legal technicality, but a question of the republic's very existence as a national-territorial community.”
Moreover, they write, “The intention to remove the aforementioned provisions from the Constitution of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) is not an isolated event but part of a systematic effort by the federal center aimed at dismantling the special status of the republics within the Russian Federation—a strategy observed over the past 25 years.”
In support of their argument that this is just the latest and perhaps the penultimate step of Moscow’s campaign since Putin came to power to destroy federalism in Russia and the republics and other federal subjects who make it up, they offer the following chronology:
2001 – The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation invalidated provisions of the Federal Treaty that enshrined the sovereignty of the republics. Consequently, the Declarations of State Sovereignty adopted in the 1990s effectively lost their legal force;
From 2005 onwards – Heads of the republics ceased to be elected by direct popular vote. The people ceased to be the actual source of power, even though this remains proclaimed in the constitutions of both the Russian Federation and the KBR. Thus, the republics were deprived of the right to political self-expression within their own constituent entities of the Federation;
2018 – Abolition of the mandatory study of national languages in schools, dealing a blow to the cultural foundations of statehood, despite the fact that the Russian Constitution grants the state languages of the republics equal status with Russian within those republics;
2020 – Constitutional reform aimed at establishing a "unified system of public authority," which effectively subordinated regional bodies to federal structures;
2021–2022 – A ban on using the title "President" for the heads of the republics, eliminating a political symbol of statehood;
2023 – Constitutional courts—a key institution of statehood—were finally abolished in all the republics;
And now – the republic's parliament has accepted a protest from the KBR prosecutor regarding the removal of key provisions concerning statehood and territorial integrity from the republic's Constitution.
In short, the declaration of the ten argues that “the 1992 contractual model of the federal structure—is being systematically dismantled. We urge that this process be halted while there is still time.” And its authors urge that the deputies remember that “their primary duty is to take decision that don’t infringe on the interests of their native republic.”
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