Putin Involved in Effort to Force Ingushetia to Hand Over Land to Chechnya, ‘Fortanga’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 11 – Yury Chaika, the head of the North Caucasus Federal District, who favors having Ingushetia yield to Chechnya’s demands that it hand over parkland to Grozy, has involved Vladimir Putin personally in this effort since at least the fall of 2023, according to a new report by Fortanga, the independent Ingushetia news outlet.
    That report is available at fortanga.org/2024/12/chajka-predlozhil-putinu-soglaercensovat-peredachu-chechne-chasti-erzi-posle-obrashheniya-kadyrova/ and comes on the heels of reports that Ingush officials have been lobbying against Chaika and his support of Ramzan Kadyrov (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/chechnya-pressuring-ingushetia-to-yield.html).
    That Chaika has been behind Kadyrov isn’t news, but what appears to be is that the presidential plenipotentiary has been forced to try to get Putin involved in order to get Ingushetia to agree to transfer park land that was part of the 2018 deal that gave ten percent of Ingushetia’s territory to Chechnya.
    If Putin doesn’t go along with Chaika and Kadyrov, the Kremlin leader would face real problems with both figures; but if he does, now that his role is becoming more widely known, any outburst of Ingush anger about this deal will be directed less at the republic leadership as was the case after 2018 and more at Moscow, exactly the opposite of what Putin wants.
    Indeed, while the Fortanga report may seem a small thing, it could easily mark the turning point in the Ingush national movement away from attacks on Moscow’s local representatives who can always be sacrificed by the center and toward Moscow itself, a development that the Kremlin will find it much more difficult to counter.