Kyiv Views Middle Volga And North Caucasus As Likely To Be First Regions To Become Independent Of Moscow – OpEd
By Paul Goble
Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a senior member of the Verkhovna Rada, says that he and others in Kyiv view the peoples of the Middle Volga and the North Caucasus as the nations most likely to be the first to secure independence from Moscow and thus must be the focus of Ukrainian efforts to speed that process.
He says that the independence of the peoples now within the borders of the Russian Federation is critical for Ukraine because once Kyiv recovers its land up to the 1991 border, it must have relations with partners committed to independence rather than face a totalitarian state opposed to its existence (ukr.radio/news.html?newsID=107066 reposed and translated at abn.org.ua/en/liberation-movements/ukraine-is-trying-to-prepare-the-elite-of-the-enslaved-nations-of-russia-yurchyshyn/).
Yurchyshyn says Kyiv has two other tasks in this area: providing Ukrainians with more information about the peoples within the borders of the Russian Federation and convincing Western countries that Russia’s disintegration won’t lead to nuclear war but rather become the very best course to achieving lasting peace.
That Yurchyshyn should talk about the importance of transforming what is now the Russian Federation, about the significance of improving the understanding of the Ukrainian people about the peoples within the borders of that country, and about the requirement that Kyiv help convince the West that the demise of Russia as a requirement for peace is no surprise.
But one thing that he did say may come as a surprise: his belief that Tatarstan and the other peoples of the Middle Volga will be among the first to leave the Russian Federation and gain independence given that they are surrounded by what Moscow has proclaimed “Russian” regions and thus do not have direct access to other countries.
Yurchyshyn’s mention of the Middle Volga region and Tatarstan in particular suggests that Kyiv is increasing its focus on what some have called the Orenburg corridor, the land between Bashkortostan and Idel Ural in the north and Kazakhstan in the south, a narrow strip of land that represents the land bridge that would make independence possible.
Kyiv has talked about this in the past. That it is returning to this issue now is something worth watching. (For background on this issue, see jamestown.org/program/kazakh-nationalists-call-for-astana-to-absorb-orenburg-outraging-moscow/, jamestown.org/program/the-orenburg-corridor-and-the-future-of-the-middle-volga/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/ukrainian-interest-in-orenburg-corridor.html.)
That the Ukrainian parliamentarian did not mention the Ukrainian regions inside the Russian Federation known as “wedges” does not mean that they are not on Kyiv’s radar screen but only that raising that issue in the current environment would allow Moscow to denounce Kyiv as “imperialist.” (On these regions, see jamestown.org/program/moscow-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-in-russia-and-their-growing-support-from-abroad/, jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and jamestown.org/program/the-kuban-a-real-wedge-between-russia-and-ukraine/.)
