Paul Goble
Staunton,
October 20 – To a remarkable degree, Irina Pavlenko says, Ramzan Kadyrov has
followed the Crimean scenario in his drive to annex portions of Ingushetia,
including Grozny’s insistence that the Chechens and the Ingush are one people
and should not be divided territorially as they were not in Soviet times.
The
deputy head of Kyiv’s Center for Research on the Problems of the Russian
Federation argues that what Kadyrov has done in fact is “’a Crimean boomerang’
for the North Caucasus,” something Moscow has precipitated as a result of its
own actions in Crimea but may not be able to stop (zn.ua/international/krymskiy-bumerang-dlya-severnogo-kavkaza-297682_.html).
Why the Kremlin
allowed Kadyrov to carry out “a mini-‘Crimea is ours’” operation and take part
of the land from a neighboring republic is “a complicated question,” Pavlenko
says. It is possible that Moscow fears
that this is the lesser evil in a situation in which Kadyrov could destabilize
the North Caucasus in other ways.
Or it may be that Putin needs
Kadyrov for so many other tasks, including seizing portions of Ukraine or
developing ties with the Saudis, that the Kremlin felt it had no choice but to
go along. Or it may be that Putin isn’t willing to tell Kadyrov that the
Chechen leader can’t seize some one else’s territory given that that is exactly
what the Kremlin leader has done.
As for Yevkurov, she continues, it
seems clear that he felt he had to go along lest Kadyrov demand even more,
although the Ingush leader conceded far more territory and oil-rich territory
at that to Chechnya than he got in return.
And as a result, “the situation developed further along the lines of a
Ukrainian scenario,” with the Maidan in Magas.
There has been one significant
difference: the Ingush appealed to Moscow to intervene; but the Kremlin washed
its hands of the matter, insisting that the territorial transfer was something
the two republics should deal with on their own. That attitude only made the situation worse
as far as the Ingush were concerned.
They and “not without basis fear
that the territorial pretensions of neighboring Chechnya are only part of
another, more global plan for the restoration of a single Chechen-Ingush
republic which existed before the disintegration of the USSR.” Chechen
suggestions that the two nations are in fact “one people,” another echo of the
Crimean case, only feed such fears.
“The Caucasus traditionally is a
quite explosive place, and any conflict here threatens to grow over into bloody
clashes,” Pavlenko says. That prompted delegations from neighboring republics
to flood into Ingushetia in the hopes of calming things down. But Kadyrov holds
a trump card: he alone has his own 30,000-man armed force.
That makes the situation extremely
dangerous for the Ingush, the Ukrainian expert says, because it is not clear
that Moscow is prepared to put its own forces in play as long as Kadyrov is
involved – and as long as Moscow is avoiding any coverage of what is going on
between Chechnya and Ingushetia.
It certainly appears, Pavlenko
argues, that Moscow hopes the Ingush will simply get tired of protesting and
will fall in line with what Kadyrov wants. But “the land question is very sharp
in the North Caucasus as is the question of honor and dignity.” Unless pressed
by Moscow, Kadyrov isn’t going to back down – and that appears unlikely.
Consequently, Pavlenko says, the
Russian authorities are likely to try to ease the situation by replacing Yevkurov
and his team or by seeking to divide the Ingush opposition by playing up
divisions within it. How successful Moscow will be with either step remains
unclear at least at present.
What all this shows, the Kyiv
analyst concludes, is that stability in Russia is very much a relative thing
and that the protests in Magas over the past month like the Maidan in Ukraine
four years ago promises to produce more “unexpected developments” in Russia
itself.
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