PSCRP-BESA Reports No 129 (May 06, 2025)
Ethnic policies of the USSR as a time bomb
Chechens (Nokhchi) and Ingush (Galgai) are two closely related peoples. Not only are they neighbors: they share religion (Sufi Sunnism), tribal (teip) social structure, traditions[1] based on a combination of customary (adat) and Islamic (sharia) law, mutually intelligible languages, and historical fate: both peoples were subject to deportation in 1944. However, their consolidation into one ethnogroup, or “supra-ethnos” — the Vainakhs — was proposed by the Ingush linguist Zaurbek Malsagov, who lived in the first third of the 20th century, in the run-up to the formation of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR.
The prerequisites for the territorial dispute were laid with the redrawing of the borders of the restored autonomy after the return of the Vainakhs from deportation. On the one hand, the Naursky and Shelkovsky districts, formerly part of the Stavropol Krai, which at that time had a predominantly Russian population, were transferred to the ChIASSR. On the other hand, the Prigorodny district, populated mainly by Ingush before the deportation, was transferred to North Ossetia (in 1992 this resulted in the violent Ossetian-Ingush conflict). These changes substantially increased the area of the future Chechnya, while the area of the future Ingushetia, already very small, decreased.
After Dzhokhar Dudayev came to power in Chechnya and proclaimed an independent Ichkeria in 1991, the Ingush found themselves without their own administrative-territorial entity. Soon a referendum was held in the three Ingush districts, which approved the creation of a national republic with the regaining of the Prigorodny district and a capital in Vladikavkaz, which, of course, was unacceptable to North Ossetia. Nevertheless, in December 1992 the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation passed a law establishing the Ingush Republic; the document did not specify its borders. In 1993, the leaders of Chechnya and Ingushetia, Dzhokhar Dudayev and Ruslan Aushev, signed a treaty that transferred most of the Sunzhensky district[2] to Ingushetia, yet the border was not officially demarcated.
In 2003, Murat Zyazikov, the head of Ingushetia, and Akhmat Kadyrov, the first pro-Russian president of Chechnya and father of its current leader, signed a protocol that essentially confirmed the agreements between Dudayev and Aushev.
Disputed land
The reason why Ramzan Kadyrov would want territories that Ingushetia considers its own can only be hypothesized. According to Kadyrov himself, this is motivated by a desire to “cancel” the decisions made by the Ichkerian authorities and by historical considerations – much like the federal authorities justify the annexation of Ukrainian territories with “history”[3]. Business motives are also possible: Kadyrov commissioned the “construction of developed infrastructure and tourist routes” on the territory adjacent to the border and even said that he wanted to make the Galanchozhsky district a tourist destination. None of these plans has been implemented so far, and the Galanchozhsky district has not even been formed. Obviously, for him explicit demonstration of power (“I can take whatever I want”) has inherent value.
Perhaps there is another reason: the political and ideological confrontation between Kadyrov and Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who headed Ingushetia from 2008 to 2019. The fact is that Kadyrov has adopted the harshest possible tactics towards the participants of the Second Chechen War who did not join his camp — despite repeated amnesties, those accused of involvement in the armed insurgency are still given demonstratively harsh sentences. At the same time, Yevkurov, a combat intelligence officer, aimed to encourage the return of these people “from the woods” and their integration into society, and tolerated the work of human rights activists in Ingushetia. Eventually, Kadyrov’s approach took over, and the consequences of the territorial dispute cost Yevkurov his office.
In any case, Kadyrov began making claims to his neighbors’ lands long before the conflict culminated in 2018-2019.
As early as 2005, even before he took office as head of Chechnya, he said that “both in the neighboring regions and in Chechnya itself it is well known where the border ran before the unification of the subjects [of the federation] and where it should run after the demarcation.
In July 2012, an explosion in the village of Galashki in the Sunzhensky district of Ingushetia killed two suspected militants and wounded a third. Kadyrov claimed, that this was the result of a secret operation carried out by Chechen security forces and that those killed were the organizers of an attack on his ancestral village of Tsentoroi in 2010. According to Yunus-Bek Yevkurov’s account, no “special operation” took place, and the militants, who had entered the republic from Chechnya, were killed in a self-detonation. In response, Kadyrov lambasted Yevkurov, saying, among other things: “While Yevkurov does not want consolidation and brotherly relations, for us these principles are sacred, and therefore we will define the borders and draw them where they should be historically and according to the laws of the Russian Federation.” Yevkurov, citing the month of Ramadan, when Muslims are prescribed to forgive offenses, did not comment on these statements, and the row was hushed up.
Simultaneously, both republics formed commissions to determine the administrative boundary. They did not reach an agreement. In late 2012 Chechnya adopted a law that included several Ingush settlements into the Sunzhensky district of the republic, and a few months later also added the village of Arshty on the grounds that it was predominantly populated by Chechens. Ingushetia, of course, did not recognize these claims. In April 2013 a fight broke out in Arshty between Ingush and Chechen security forces, followed by Yevkurov’s ban on any uncoordinated operations by the Kadyrovites in Ingushetia. Nevertheless, the territorial conflict stalled for more than five years.
Redrawing the border and its consequences
It resumed in August 2018, when the Chechen side began construction of a highway which allegedly encroached on the territory of Ingushetia by 15 kilometers, right near the village of Arshty, with construction equipment and workers guarded by armed Chechen special forces; there were also reports of tree felling in the territory of the Ingush natural reserve “Erzi” and an attempt to push the checkpoint deep into Ingushetia. The Ingush public perceived this as an attempt to seize the republic’s lands — and rightly so.
On September 26, Ramzan Kadyrov and Yunus-Bek Yevkurov signed an agreement on fixing the border between the republics. It is not known why Yevkurov agreed to this. It was claimed, that a “like-kind exchange of non-residential territories” had been carried out between the parties. This is not true: although there are indeed no settlements on the lands that have changed their territorial affiliation, Chechnya received 26,800 hectares, while Ingushetia received only a thousand hectares. Moreover, there are Ingush ancestral cemeteries on the lands ceded to Chechnya, which has an important symbolic meaning.
However, it was not the cession of land as such that most angered the Ingush, but the fact that the agreement had been prepared and signed in secrecy, keeping the residents in the dark and bypassing formal and informal (teips, elders) institutions. Protests involving many thousands of people immediately followed and lasted for six months, until they were finally stifled.
It should be noted that initially some official bodies and individuals attempted, while timidly, to oppose the decisions. Thus, on October 4, the Constitutional Court of Ingushetia ruled, that the parliament of the republic has no power to ratify the agreement — it can only be authorized through referendum. This decision was ignored on the very same day, and the deputies who came out to the protesters claimed, that in fact the parliament had voted against it, but that the results had been falsified.
The following months were eventful. Mass protests in Magas and other towns continued virtually all the time. The authorities permitted these rallies and on the whole did not hinder them; however, the persecution of the activists began almost immediately. Public bodies, from the Council of Teips, which organized the “World Congress of the Ingush People”, to associations controlled by the authorities, not only issued a number of harsh statements and supported the protests, but also became their driving force.
At the same time, there were several rounds of “disputes” between Chechen higher-ups and Ingush opinion leaders, including a visit by Kadyrov himself to the former Ingush Minister of Internal Affairs Akhmed Pogorov — as is typical in such cases, with video addresses, threats, references to sharia and tradition, ritual tea ceremony, declared reconciliation and other attributes of the genre. In Ingushetia, such visits were perceived as a threat, and to protect those who were visited by the uninvited “guests”, a crowd of local residents would gather outside their homes. In December, Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the border agreement was legal.
It would not be a stretch to assume that the relentless protests began to irritate the federal authorities, and what happened at the rally in Magas on March 26-27, 2019, which drew up to 30,000 people (the entire population of Ingushetia is about half a million) was a pre-planned provocation similar to the events on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on May 6, 2012.
The organizers of the protest announced a three-day rally, but the authorities only approved a one-day event. When it was nearing evening, those gathered refused to disperse. Then Rosgvardia officers, who had arrived from other regions, resorted to force, and clashes and scuffles ensued. They did not escalate into serious bloodshed, thanks to the actions of Ingush police officers who stood in a chain between the protesters and the Rosgvardia, and to the pleas of the elders participating in the rally, who exhorted against violence. The protesters dispersed the next morning, and the next protest never happened — the “Ingush affair” was underway.
A total of 49 people were prosecuted, including 13 police officers and seven public leaders. They were accused of doing exactly the opposite of what they actually did — organizing violence. In December 2021, the seven protest leaders were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 7.5 to 9 years.
This verdict was, without exaggeration, a slap in the face to the entire Ingush people. The seven leaders are very well-known and important people in the republic, “the salt of the nation”, and two of them are elders: the chairman of the Council of Teips, Malsag Uzhakhov, was 69 years old at the time of the sentencing, and a member of this council, Akhmed Barakhoev, was 67. Their persecution, as well as the political persecution of a woman — Zarifa Sautiyeva, deputy director of the republican memorial complex for the victims of repression — was unimaginably and unambiguously perceived in the system of “cultural codes” of Ingush society as an “act of cannibalism”.
Ramzan Kadyrov publicly supported the crackdown on the leaders of the Ingush protest and threatened to grab even more land from his neighbors, but there is no direct indication that he was involved in the demonstratively harsh and unjust verdicts. It is much more logical and conclusive to consider them in the context of the federal government’s course of brutal suppression of any grassroots mass actions, protests and movements, no matter their nature or slogans, from the “Baymak case” in Bashkortostan to the anti-Semitic pogrom at the Makhachkala airport.
“Brothers”
Kadyrov’s next meddling in Ingushetia’s affairs came as a surprise. In November 2022, he publicly stood up for the Batalkhajin brotherhood[4], whose members he called brothers and whose persecution he called a hounding. “If they are terrorists, I am the number one terrorist,” he declared.
One of the reasons for this sudden support is obvious: just four weeks later, it became known, that about three dozen Batalkhajins were enrolled in the so-called special forces university in the Chechen town of Gudermes, where mercenaries train before being sent to the war in Ukraine. They were used to form the BOBR “Akhmat” unit (BOBR stands for “Batalkhajin Rapid Response Squad”). The truth is, Kadyrov has effectively sabotaged mobilization in Chechnya, and the “quota” for the supply of fighters to the war is fulfilled by recruiting mercenaries from other regions, all sorts of “offenders” and Chechen security forces — the latter are usually appointed to rear positions and assignments.
There may also be another possible explanation: Kadyrov, like the Batalkhajin, practices Sufi Islam, and he is extremely uncomfortable with the spread of Salafism in the North Caucasus, in which he rightly sees a threat to his power.
The federal and Ingush authorities ignored both demarches — the support of the Batalkhajin and using them to form a squad — despite the fact that the commander of the BOBR “Akhmat” and several of its fighters are on the federal wanted list.
The battle over marketplace
The latest episode in the public confrontation between Kadyrov and Ingushetia so far is linked to the business conflict around the Wildberries marketplace, which was previously covered in detail in publications by PSCRP-BESA. On the surface, the conflict looked like a dispute between Wildberries owner Tatiana Bakalchuk (Kim) and her now ex-husband Vladislav Bakalchuk over a possible merger between Wildberries and Russ, a group of companies that handles outdoor advertising. The beneficiary of Russ is Bekkhan Barakhoyev, a State Duma deputy from Ingushetia. Dagestani oligarch and senator Suleiman Kerimov is also believed to have a stake in the deal — he allegedly encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to support the plans for the merger. Ramzan Kadyrov advocated for Vladislav Bakalchuk.
On September 18, 2024, a shootout broke out at the Moscow headquarters of Wildberries. Among the attackers were Kadyrovites who were accompanying Vadislav Bakalchuk, and two Wildberries guards, ethnic Ingush, were killed. Thousands gathered for their funerals in Ingushetia, locals came to the airport to greet the deceased and lined the roads where the bodies were being transported — apparently a political statement addressed to Kadyrov.
Three weeks after the shootout, Kadyrov claimed that he had been the subject of an assassination plot in the making, declared a blood feud against Bekkhan Barakhoyev, and threatened Suleiman Kerimov and another Dagestani deputy, Rizvan Kurbanov, with blood vengeance unless they could prove that they were not involved in commissioning the alleged assassination. Barakhoyev and Kurbanov publicly rejected Kadyrov’s accusations and stopped attending Duma sessions for a while, while Kerimov completely ignored them – but the head of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, spoke out in his support. The Chechen leader’s threats turned futile, and in April of this year the conflict around Wildberries came to a close with the complete defeat of Vladislav Bakalchuk and, consequently, of Kadyrov.
Despite Kadyrov’s systematic hostility towards Ingushetia and the Ingush, these conflicts have had little effect on the peoples’ everyday interactions and have not led to the development of any pronounced national discord. However, according to one Ingush activist, “whereas previously we felt close kinship or even a similar identity with Chechens”, the protests against the transfer of land and solidarity with those convicted in the “Ingush case” “have made us more closely united among ourselves, we have determined that the Ingush are Ingush, and we do not really have any friends or brothers.”
Kadyrov can be expected to continue “nipping” his neighbors, testing their strength and trying to expand his own sphere of influence. This can be hindered by his progressive illness — and by the federal center, which always rebukes the Chechen leader if, in the Kremlin’s opinion, he indulges himself too much.
[1] In fact, Chechen customs, while not encouraging, still allow Chechen women to marry Ingush; however, they are not allowed to marry members of other ethnic groups.
[2] Thus, the Sunzhensky district of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was divided into two parts, which became two different Sunzhensky districts of Ingushetia and Chechnya respectively. The latter was renamed Sernovodsky in 2019.
[3] Extending the analogy, later Kadyrov also said that Ingush were descended from Chechens.
[4] The wird (Sufi brotherhood) of the Batalkhajin comprises about 20,000 people. They consider themselves followers of the Ingush sheikh Batal-Khadji Belkhoroev, who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries; his descendants form the basis of the wird. It is impossible to join the brotherhood — one is born into it, and one cannot leave it either. In essence, it is a structure that combines the features of a mafia and a sect, with mutual cover-up. The Batalkhajins are associated with large-scale organized crime, contract murders; they have long held many high government positions, controlled important businesses, etc. In recent years, the authorities have been persecuting the Batalkhajins. Recently they have been linked to the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall in the Moscow region. The brotherhood denies the latter, which sounds reasonable: the attack was organized by a Salafist cell from Afghanistan, Wilayat Khorasan, and Salafists see Sufis as apostates and pagans. The Russian authorities declared the “militant wing” of the Batalkhajin brotherhood a terrorist organization.