Saturday, November 10, 2018

Chechen Parliament Publishes Map Showing New Borders with Ingushetia


Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 10 – Even though the Russian Constitutional Court appears set to take up the question of the legality of the border agreement reached between Ingushetia’s Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen parliament has now put up on its website and labelled official the border changes the two agreed to on September 26.

            That accord touched off two weeks of public protests and the convention of an international congress of the Ingush people, even though the Chechen parliament ratified the measure on October 4 and declared that it would go  into force as of October 16 (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/327744/).

            It is likely that many Ingush opponents of the measure will see this latest Chechen action as an effort by Kadyrov to create facts on the ground and to put pressure on Moscow to agree to what he wants regardless of the laws and constitutions of the republics and of the Russian Federation. 

            Three other developments during the last 24 hours around the border accord dispute include:

·         Ingush activists say that someone  is flooding with republic with printed broadsides in support of the border agreement but that “the population doesn’t like this” (facebook.com/ingmashr/posts/2161872090519232).

·         Lawyers for Oleg Kozlovsky, the Amnesty International worker who was kidnaped and beaten in early October while trying to cover the protests in Ingushetia and who many believe was the victim of official overreach, say that the Ingush authorities are dragging  their feet in opening any investigation of the matter (kavkazr.com/a/29591583.html).

·         Vladimir Yevseyev of Moscow’s Institute for the CIS says that any border changes in the Caucasus are always troubling for some in the population but that the one between Ingushetia and Chechnya is now being resolved.  He adds that “perhaps, it isn’t necessary to talk so much about this in the media” (echo.msk.ru/programs/bezkupur/2312550-echo/).

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