Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 23 – It is long past time for representatives of the national republics within the Russian Federation to sit down together and then unite to take back the rights and powers Moscow has stolen from them over the last two decades or so, Sakha Republic deputy Aleksandr Ivanov says.
Over that period – which coincides with Putin’s rule – Moscow has taken all the powers that the republics once had and accused anyone who resists this process of separatism even though it is the center which has “created the conditions for separatist thinking” (instagram.com/alexandr_ivanov_nrb/ https://echofm.online/news/deputat-yakutskogo-parlamenta-obvinil-kreml-v-lishenii-naczionalnyh-respublik-ih-prav-i-bogatstv).
Ivanov, one of the republic deputies who recently voted against changing the republic constitution so that the last vestiges of its former powers were removed, says that he is now being trailed from undercover police. After this declaration, it is unlikely that he will escape arrest or worse.
But however that may be, Ivanov’s words are important for two reasons. On the one hand, they are clear evidence that the most important centers of resistance to Moscow increasingly are not in the North Caucasus and in the Middle Volga but in the region east of the Urals, including not only Sakha but the Altai, Tyva and Buryatia.
And on the other, they suggest that ever more people in the republics now recognize that their only hope of protecting what they have left and retaking what Moscow has taken from them is to work together by recognizing that they are all being oppressed and need unity to prevent Moscow from successfully continuing its divide and rule policies.
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