With Suppression of Ingush, Moscow Restoring Colonial Rule in North Caucasus, Khatazhukov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 5 – The suppression of the Ingush protest movement, Valery Khatazhukov says, is a demonstration of the power of the new “governor general,” Aleksandr Matovnikov, the presidential plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus Federal District” (fortanga.org/2019/12/kreml-vozrozhdaet-na-kavkaze-kolonialnye-formy-pravleniya/).

            According to the executive director of the Kabardino-Balkar Human Rights Center, Matovnikov is now acting in ways analogous to those of tsarist general Aleksey Yermolov as part of Moscow’s effort to restore “colonial forms of administration” across the entire North Caucasus (youtu.be/UQE8-MT4pPU).

            Increasingly, the Ingush people view the situation the same way. Portal Six commentator Akhmed Buzurtanov says directly that the new nationalities minister of Ingushetia is “the embodiment of the colonial approach to which the Kremlin now has shifted to with regard to the non-Russian republics” (6portal.ru/posts/новый-министр-троянский-конь-или-вол/).

            One might reasonably expect, Buzurtanov says, that the person put in charge of nationality policy would know the republic he was responsible for. But the new nationalities minister, Ruslan Volkov, is from Moscow via Crimea and despite his claims to be a Muslim has adopted his mother’s Russian last name rather than his father’s Muslim one.

            He has no background in ethnology, but he has been politically active. His Foundation for the Support of Islamic Culture and Education has played a key role in the annexation of Crimea. One can only assume, the Portal Six commentator says, that someone in Moscow thinks that Ingushetia has to be “annexed” as well.

            That this is Moscow’s plan is certainly suggested by Volkov’s first actions in Magas.  He has continued efforts to disband or at least discredit the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of the republic not for religious reasons but rather because despite pressure, the MSD stood with the people rather than the powers during the recent protests.

            He has organized a series of supposed “Islamic” meetings to divide and confuse Muslims in the republic and has even tried to set the Sufis against the Salafis in the hopes that this will prevent them from supporting the Ingush opposition, something they have both done up to the present.

            All that Volkov has done is completely consistent with his background as a Moscow businessman and agent of Russian imperialism, Burtuzanov says.  What he will do in the future can only be a matter of conjecture; but if he continues as he has begun, the commentator says, the situation will become even more dire than it now is.

            “It must be understood that any actions of an individual appointed minister of a republic from the outside and not by its residents or being a representative of its indigenous people and who has a doubtful biography and reputation will inevitably spark the suspicion that he is a Trojan horse.”

            “Or in this case,” Burtuzanov says, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”  To avoid such developments, “ministers and indeed the entire republic leadership must be elected by the people of the republic themselves from among those who enjoy the trust of the population, from among those who know our society, its pains and desires and who have the corresponding competence.”