27 February 2024
Ukraine’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has adopted a resolution recognising the Ingush people’s right to create an independent state and condemning Russia’s mass deportation of the Ingush in 1944.
The Verkhovna Rada adopted the resolution on 23 February, the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush from their homes in the North Caucasus.
The Soviet Union, under the rule of Joseph Stalin, orchestrated the forcible deportation of the entire population of Karachays, Balkars, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Meskhetian Turks, and Crimean Tatars, amongst other ethnic groups, to Central Asia, in the early 1940s.
The Chechens and Ingush were deported from their shared republic, the Chechen–Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), which was abolished and divided amongst neighbouring Caucasian republics.
‘The purpose of adopting the draft resolution is to condemn Russia’s crimes against the Ingush, including the mass deportation of the Ingush people in 1944’, read the Verkhovna Rada’s statement.
The Verkhovna Rada also condemned attacks carried out by Russian special forces on Ingush civilians during the Ingush–Ossetian conflict of 1992, over territories handed over to North Ossetia after the abolishment of the Chechen–Ingush ASSR.
The Ingush Independence Committee, a social movement created in 2023 calling for the independence of Ingushetia, praised the resolution as an ‘important event in the history’ of the Ingush people.
‘This is the first and most important step in the international arena for the future international recognition of our independence, as well as the tragedies of the Ingush people in 1944 and 1992’, a committee spokesperson told OC Media.
They added that the Ukrainian parliament’s call for ‘justice’ for the Ingush people stood in contrast to sentiments expressed in Ingushetia itself, where they suggested people were unable to express similar calls for independence.
‘Still, we know the sentiments of our people, who have lost faith in justice within Russia’, said the committee’s spokesperson.
In October 2022, Ukraine recognised the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as an independent state that is ‘temporarily’ occupied by Russia, and condemned ‘the commission of genocide against the Chechen people’ during the first and second Chechen wars.
