The Nalchik City Court has found Balkar activist Khadis Tetuev guilty of inciting hatred and enmity on ethnic grounds against Circassians, fining him ₽10,000 ($120).
The ruling was issued on 24 September, according to information from the court’s database.
Local media outlet Gazeta Yuga later reported that the court imposed the minimum penalty provided under the relevant article of the Russian code of administrative offences — a fine of ₽10,000 ($120).
According to the case materials, the administrative proceedings were initiated over publications by Tetuev posted on the literary website Proza.ru in April and May 2025. Court documents state that an expert analysis found negative statements about Circassians in the texts. The publications in question were titled ‘The Flag of Extremism’ and ‘Pan-Circassianism and the Struggle for the Disintegration of Russia’.
The court stated that the examination which identified Tetuev’s statements as inciting ethnic hatred had been carried out by ‘specialists in the relevant field’, and that their findings were ‘objective, reasoned, and well-founded’.
Tetuev, however, disagreed with the experts’ conclusions, telling the media that they ‘lacked the necessary specialist knowledge’. Despite this, the court found him guilty of an administrative offence.
The publications that led to the case were devoted to events organised by Circassian activists in Kabarda–Balkaria. They mentioned, among other things, processions held to mark Circassian Flag Day on 25 April and the anniversary of the end of Russia’s conquest of the North Caucasus on 21 May. Following the memorial march in May 2025, at least eight activists were detained and later given administrative arrests by the court.
Elizaveta Chukharova
At the time of publication, the texts that prompted the legal proceedings were no longer available on Proza.ru; direct links now show the message ‘deleted by the author’.
According to court records, Tetuev filed an appeal against the Nalchik City Court’s decision on 9 October. No information on the date of its review has been published.
Six years ago, the Nalchik City Court heard a civil lawsuit filed by historian and publisher Viktor Kotlyarov against Tetuev. The court then ordered Tetuev to pay ₽50,000 ($600) in compensation for moral damage over a publication in which he criticised Kotlyarov’s book The Kanzhal Battle: A View Through the Centuries. An expert assessment found that the text contained expressions that could be perceived as offensive.
Kabardians, or eastern Circassians, mark the 1708 Battle of Kanzhal as the end of incursions by the Crimean Khanate into historic Kabardia. Some Balkars argue that the battle never took place.
In 2018, several dozen Balkars inhabiting the village of Kyondelen blocked 30 Circassian activists from climbing Mount Kanzhal as they attempted to commemorate the anniversary of the battle.
Tetuev is an economist by education. According to publicly available information, he worked for more than 20 years in the tax service before turning to cultural and historical projects, including one, A Hundred Steps to Kaysyn, dedicated to the poet Kaysyn Kuliev.
Previously, in July, the court found 60-year-old Muradin Rakhaev guilty of the same offence. According to the ruling, Rakhaev was interviewed in a YouTube video in which he was introduced as a ‘Balkar public figure’. During the interview, Rakhaev called the Circassians ‘separatists’. He was fined ₽15,000 ($180).
At the end of 2024, Khasan Mamaev was fined ₽10,000 ($120) under the same article. Experts found in his video ‘statements containing a negative assessment of a group of people identified by the nationality “Kabardins” […] and a negative assessment of a “group of people identified as officials” ’.
Elizaveta Chukharova
