Armed Resistance to Mobilization Quite Possible in Ingushetia, Sautieva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – “The war in Ukraine has added fuel to existing tensions in the relationship between society and the authorities in Ingushetia,” according to Zarina Sautieva, an ethnic Ingush who is currently a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/sabotaging-putins-mobilization-form-social-protest).

            From the war’s outset, she says, Ingush society, “evaluating developments through the lenses of Ingush and Islamic ethics has felt that the war in Ukraine is neither just nor permissible.” And the population may resist with acts of violence. Almost the only supporters in the republic of the Kremlin policy are people who work for the government.

            The fighting in Ukraine has thus deepened the divide between them, a divide already almost a chasm because of the longstanding distrust the Ingush people feel toward the regional and federal authorities because of all their anti-Ingush policies in the past, including the 1991 Prigorodny district war and the 2018 handover of Ingush land to Chechnya.

            According to Sautieva, “Ingush society has effectively launched an opposition to the Russian state. The regional authorities have no means of effectively communicating with the people,” and even the muftiat of Ingushetia, which the authorities have tried to suppress, “has refused to speak in support of the war.

            In fact, opposition to the war among the population is so strong that  “republic authorities, feeling their own weakness and lack of influence are much less outspoken in their support for the war than are their counterparts in neighboring Chechnya, North Ossetia and Kabadino-Balkaria.”

            Significantly, she ways, “the spring conscription campaign in the region has mostly failed.” (stress supplied) Because of that history, “for the Ingush, sabotaging the mobilization effort looks like a logical step in their long-simmering confrontation with the regional and federal authorities.”

            In all these regards, Sautieva continues, “Ingushetia is not alone: similar stories can be told about many other Russian regions.” People everywhere have reasons to be angry with the current situation, and none are ready for mobilization. As a result, any attempt to forcibly conscript young people into the army are likely to be resisted “up to and including armed confrontation with the authorities” (stress supplied).