Russian Officials Unlikely to Bring Charges Against Those who Attack North Caucasians, Sending a Message Likely to Lead to More, SOVA Experts Suggest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 30 – Aleksandr Verkhovsky, head of the SOVA Research Center, says Moscow does not encourage “Russian ethnic nationalism as an organized phenomenon,” but Kremlin policy “often shifts in that direction” especially since the launch of Putin’s expanded war against Ukraine and both Russian nationalists and Russian society “feel this.”

            He says this approach, which of course gives the Putin regime a certain deniability, requires that the ethnic Russian nationalists stay within certain limits or face problems; but within those limits or right up to the edge of them, such people can behave extremely violently (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/412637).

            Verkhovsky’s colleague, Vera Alperovich, suggests that individual ethnic Russian nationalists may violate this line, thus providing deniability to their organizational leaders; but she suggests that one of the ways the regime sends a message of its support is by “not investigating” particular incidents.

            After a time, that makes it clear who is really behind such actions whatever the powers that be say.