Paul Goble
Staunton, May 20 – The leaders of six non-Russian movements – the Bashkirs, the Buryat, the Ingush, the Kalmyk, the Erzyan and the Udygey – have formed a League of Free Nations to promote the freedom and sovereignty of their nations, to expand their numbers to include other non-Russian groups, and to ally themselves with other countries.
In announcing the new grouping of nations, they say that it has become necessary because almost all discussions of the future of the Russian Federation have degenerated into discussions of “the future of the federal center” rather than of the country as such (idel-ural.org/archives/korennye-narody-rf-sozdayut-platformu-dlya-borby-za-svobodu-i-suverenitet/; for the text of their declaration, see facebook.com/ruslan.gabbasov.3/posts/pfbid02).
Long victims of the imperial Russian state, they say that the changes in the world which are taking place as a result of Putin’s war in Ukraine give them hope that Russia will change and that their peoples will be able either to acquire complete freedom or an enhanced status within some renewed federation.
The organizers say that they operate on the basis of “the presumption of sovereignty” for the peoples within the current borders of the Russian Federation. These peoples have rights and only they on the basis of their own free will can delegate them to others. Any other arrangement will simply be an extension of the empire they live under now.
The six, most of whom are now in emigration because of their views, say that their immediate tasks are to seek allies both among other non-Russian nations and to establish contacts with European, Turkish and Kazakhstani organizations and political parties to promote their shared goals.
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