Chechnya has Put Kremlin in Difficult Position by Unilateral Demarcation of Daghestani Border, Experts Say

Paul Goble

Staunton, April 12 – Moscow is not especially interested in the demarcation of the borders of federal subjects, but Chechnya’s unilateral demarcation of part of its border with Daghestan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/04/kadyrov-now-provoking-makhachkala-by.html)  has put the Kremlin in a difficult position, according to three experts on the region.

First, Aleksandr Skakov, coordinator of the working group of the Center for the Study of Central Asia and the Caucasus at Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies, says that for the Kremlin, the demarcation of borders is not “a first-order” issue. It doesn’t really care where such administrative borders are drawn (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334239/).

But Moscow cares very much that any changes in those borders be done in a way that does not provoke the kind of protests and instability that the September 26 agreement between Ingushetia’s Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov has in Ingushetia since that time. 

Unfortunately, that is exactly what Kadyrov has now done again. “The head of Chechnya is continuing to push his political lien toward positioning himself as the chief politician for the entire North Caucasus. This doesn’t please his neighbors in the first instance who do not want to see him in that capacity.”

But at the same time, Skakov says, “it puts the Kremlin in an uncomfortable position: the federal center must react but it doesn’t want to.”

Second, Alikber Alikberov, the deputy director of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, notes that the situation with regard to the Chechen-Ingush border is truly complicated and that some changes may need to be made in order to “restore justice” given what the peoples of that area suffered as a result of deportations.

But any such changes must be approached with extreme care. Otherwise, this issue can play “a bad joke” on the peoples involved, sowing among them “the seeds of discord.”  That is something the Kremlin very much wants to have avoided because such conflicts will force it to act in ways it wants to avoid.

Thus, the center must act now in order to block those who think they can act as they like, as Kadyrov apparently thinks he has the power to do. Alikberov says that at the very least, Moscow wants the entire process to slow down so that errors aren’t made and clashes don’t become public.

And Aleksey Malashenko, head of research at the Moscow Institute for Civilizational Dialogue, says that Kadyrov has acted unilaterally because Moscow has no interest in causing problems for its man in Daghestan, Vladimir Vasiliyev, who has avoided exacerbating problems there but instead has sought to solve them.

“A sharpening of the conflict on the border undermines Vasiliyev’s position,” Malashenko says; “and if the dispute intensifies, an Ingush scenario may occur in Daghestan.”  Indeed, “protests in Daghestan could even exceed those of the Ingush if political tensions between the two republics reach a critical level.”

Malashenko’s suggestion on this point is important because most experts say Daghestanis won’t protest as the Ingush have (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/daghestanis-fear-theyll-lose-land-to.html) and gives new urgency to Daghestani calls for Putin to intervene on the border issue (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/daghestanis-call-on-putin-to.html).

Clearly, the situation is fluid; and it is thus now possible that Kadyrov has crossed a red line in Daghestan that may transform the situation not only in that republic but in the North Caucasus as a whole. Moscow thus has real cause for concern, especially as the protests in Ingushetia continue.