Ukrainian Parliament Declares Russian Actions Against Circassians a Genocide

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 9 – With 232 deputies voting in favor, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada today recognized Russian actions during and after the Russian invasion and occupation of Circassia to be a genocide that led to the deaths or expulsion of more than 90 percent of the members of that nation.
    The resolution specifies that Russian actions between 1763 and 1864 has “all the signs of genocide and that if such crimes were committed today, they would undoubtedly be recognized” as an act of genocide as defined by the UN Convention (unn.ua/en/news/rada-recognizes-the-genocide-of-the-circassian-people-committed-during-the-russian-caucasian-war).
    The Ukrainian parliament seeks to honor “the memory of all the victims of this crime and to express its solidarity with the Circassian (Adyghe) people” and condemns in the strongest possible terms “the genocidal actions” of the Russian authorities. It further called on the Russian Federation to recognize this action as a crime and to apologize for it.
    And the parliamentarians also “recognized the right of the Circassian (Adyghe) people in the diaspora to repatriate to the lands of their former settlement in the northwestern part of the Caucasus with the further realization of the right to national self-determination on their historical territory” and called on other countries to take similar steps.
    Circassians and their Ukrainian supporters have been seeking this declaration for more than a decade (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/circassians-press-for-kyiv-to-recognize.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/kyiv-now-reaching-out-to-circassian.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/ukrainian-parliamentarians-want-to.html).
    The approval of the resolution today represents a major victory for both and will undoubtedly lead to an expansion of other Ukrainian actions in support of the non-Russians within the current borders of the Russian Federation and a serious growth in the activism of the Circassians, both those in the homeland and those in the diaspora (jamestown.org/program/kyiv-set-to-expand-support-for-non-russians-in-russia/).
    Moscow can be expected to react with outrage and repression, but such moves are unlikely to be effective. Instead, they will radicalize the Circassians and make it less likely that the Kremlin will be in a position to bring stability to the North Caucasus or other non-Russian regions of the Russian Federation at any point in the future.