Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 6 – On his personal
telegram channel yesterday, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says that the United
States is seeking to form “an anti-Russian international.” He uses the term for
non-ethnic Russian (rossiyskiy), but
as often happens that notion is likely to be invested with ethnic meaning and
become anti-Russian (russkiy) in the
ethnic sense.
Like the flamboyant head of the LDPR
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Kadyrov often says things that are leading indicators of
where the Kremlin is heading. If that should be the case here, it would point
to a major worsening of East-West ties (capost.media/news/politicheskiyblog/kadyrov-vashington-fakticheski-stremitsya-sozdat-antirossiyskiy-internatsional/
The risk that
Russians in the Kremlin and elsewhere are likely to invest such a propaganda
meme with ethnic meaning is all the more likely because of the criticism the US
has levelled at Moscow for its ethnic and religious policies, criticism which
many in Russia feel ignores the special nature of their state and is unacceptable
outside interference.
And such feelings guarantee that the
Russian government can be expected to denounce as an American project a draft
resolution introduced yesterday in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine calling on
Western institutions, including the EU and NATO to denounce Moscow for its
treatment of the indigenous peoples of Russia (idelreal.org/a/29804201.html).
There
is no question that such criticism is justified. What those who call for it
must recognize is the way such criticism is made is critical because in the
current environment, as Kadyrov’s words suggest, a reasonable criticism of one
thing may lead to an explosive reaction delivered in quite another place.
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