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Of course, if it wasn’t clear already, this explanation isn’t designed to justify Russia’s actions, because these events don’t. We’ve filtered these events through the Russian experience to give you an idea of what politicians on that side of this conflict are thinking, but that filter obscures the whole story, so here’s a reality check.
It’s just an unfortunate reality that the borders of the Post-Soviet states are not sacred, that there are sizable groups of people inside some of these countries that wanted to seperate, but this is a fact that works against Russia as well.
When we mentioned the problems caused by Glasnost, we mentioned 4 major separatist conflicts, Chechnya, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria, but we didn’t mention what happened to Chechnya in the end, we didn’t mention this example in the timeline because it’s kind of an outlier, unlike the other 3 this separatist movement ultimately failed, and unlike those 3 it wasn’t Pro-Russia, but Anti-Russia.
As the USSR was dissolving a Chechen nationalist group known as the “All-National Congress of the Chechen People” declared independence in the Russian region of “Chechnya-Ingushetia”, the Ingush part of the territory left to join Russia while Chechnya became the independent Chechen Republic.
Russia refused to recognise Chechen independence and this led to the First and Second Chechen Wars, which took place from 1994 to 2000, after the separatists achieved victory in the first war, forcing Russian forces to retreat from Chechnya, they were defeated in the second and Chechnya was reintegrated into Russia, by the time of the reintegration the prominent Chechen nationalists had been wiped out or defected to the Pro-Russia side, and the separatists that remained were mostly fundamentalist Islamic rebels, who waged a low level insurgency in Chechnya and surrounding Russian territories as the “Caucasus Emirate” until 2017, the terror wave we mentioned taking place in Russia that only ended 6 years ago? That was this conflict. The Chechens never got a referendum to decide between independence or unity with Russia, everything was decided for them by bombs and bullets.
From the example of Chechnya we can see that the existence of all these Post-Soviet separatist movements is uncomfortable for everyone, when separatists emerged in Georgia, Moldova, or Ukraine, Russia was happy to acknowledge them and call for their recognition but when they emerged in Russia it was apparently an outrage, suddenly territorial integrity mattered. So Russia’s saviour mentality is understandable, but not justifiable, because it’s built on self serving hypocrisy, and this is a hypocrisy Russia’s enemies are learning to exploit, recently Ukraine became the only nation to recognise Chechnya as an independent country, and that isn’t just for show, the Chechen separatists have become notable allies of the Pro-Ukraine movement, with several Chechen militias fighting for the Ukrainian cause.