Paul Goble
Staunton,
October 13 – A group of Ingush protesting the border accord Yunus-Bek Yevkurov
signed with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov met with Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press spokesman,
who told them that Yevkurov had misled the Kremlin about the size of the
protests but wouldn’t get away with doing so again (t.me/ingushetia_2018/1605).
Peskov said that Yevkurov had
claimed from the start that only a few hundred people were taking part in the
protest, but a video the demonstrators brought to the meeting and showed him of
the mass meeting on Friday indicated that as many as 90,000 Ingush were
involved, according to the estimates of experts.
One reason that Peskov received them
and that the Ingush demonstrations have proved so durable and an influence
elsewhere is that they are not directed against the territorial integrity of
the Russian Federation but rather organized around the defense of that same
territorial integrity of their republic, some analysts say (publizist.ru/blogs/108984/27405/-).
Other developments of the last 24
hours as the protest in the Magas square continued (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/326282/)
include:
·
The
Ingush government agreed to allow the demonstrations to continue beyond its
original deadline of Monday, October 15, for two more days; but only after both
influential taips and some in the government pressed for a 10-day extension,
with the Ingush head of government Zyalimkhan Yevloyev saying that he favored
that extension to prevent the protests from becoming illegal and possibly
violent.
·
Marifa
Sultygova, a deputy in the republic parliament, resigned her seat in protest of
the way in which Yevkurov has rammed through the accord. She said that she had
no choice because she felt shame at what had occurred.
·
Kabardino-Balkaria
activists who had visited the Magas demonstrations said that what the Ingush
were doing was “a unique example” for other peoples in the North Caucasus and
was being followed closely by all of them (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/326606/).
Two other reports suggest that what is
taking place in Ingushetia may soon occur elsewhere if Moscow doesn’t move
quickly to reversed what Yevkurov and Kadyrov have done. Moscow regional specialist Sergey Markedonov
says that he has been told something by people from Ingushetia that Russians
must take seriously (profile.ru/politika/item/127130-granitsy-dozvolennogo).
Ingush have told him “not once or
twice but many times,” he says, that “Chechnya was separatist but our republic
remained true to Russia. Despite that, [Moscow]
backs Grozny and finances it. Which you can’t say about us. Perhaps I order to
attract attention, we need to act just as harshly” as the Chechens did?
There are no simple answers to the crisis,
Markedonov continues; but Russians must understand that the problems in the
North Caucasus in no way disappeared from life itself even if they no longer
appeared on Moscow television. They haven’t received the coverage they deserve.
If the center doesn’t act carefully, what’s happening in Magas will happen
elsewhere.
Barakh Chemurziyev, head of the
Ingushetia Reliance organization, seconds that. He says that the
Yevkurov-Kadyrov border agreement “opens a Pandora’s box and similar sleeping conflicts
will begin to wake up one after another” not just in the North Caucasus but
across the Russian Federation (kavkazr.com/a/spyashie-zemelnye-voprosy/29540355.html).
In that event, the activist
concludes, “the federal powers that be will not be able to react adequately to
this. Today this conflict can be stopped by a single decision; but when there
will be a large number of them, the federal powers will not be able to solve
them peacefully.”
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