Combat Deaths in Ukraine Increasing Opposition to War There among Ingush, Akhilgov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 21 – From the very beginning, Kaloy Akhilgov, a lawyer who represents some of the Ingush Seven, says that the majority of the Ingush had a negative attitude toward Putin’s decision to expand his invasion of Ukraine. Any problems there, the Ingush said, were not ours to solve.

            In the months since, that attitude has only intensified, the lawyer says, with Ingush people ever more often saying that their own republic has enough unresolved problems and doesn’t need to go looking for problems in Ukraine (fortanga.org/2023/04/advokat-kaloj-ahilgov-rasskazal-ob-ingushskom-dele-i-vospriyatii-vojny-v-respublike/).

            Such feelings, Akhilgov continues, have grown in particular because approximately 50 Ingush troops have died in Ukraine, an enormous figure for a republic which has a population of fewer than half a million. For many Ingush, the war has become personal and not in the way that the Kremlin hopes for.