Russian ambition is vulnerable in what has always been the Empire’s soft underbelly: the North Caucasus. A conference in Kyiv sets a framework for opposition to Moscow’s imperialist legacy.
The following article was written by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Inal Sharip, and published in the Kyiv Post at the following link:
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/64009
The Kyiv conference “The North Caucasus as Europe’s Security Frontier” was timed to the third anniversary of Verkhovna Rada Resolution No. 2672-IX on the temporary occupation of the territory of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). Its core conclusion is that Europe’s stability is inseparable from the fate of the peoples of the North Caucasus; therefore, the “Caucasus track” must move from declarations to a managed policy with institutional tools and clearly defined addressees.
The lineup underscored the political weight and attention to the topic. Participants included Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk and First Deputy Speaker Oleksandr Korniyenko; Ukraine’s third President Viktor Yushchenko; Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine; Prime Minister of the ChRI Akhmed Zakayev; MEP Rasa Jukneviciene (former Lithuanian Minister of Defense, Vice-Chair of the EPP Group in the European Parliament); former Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga; as well as members of the Ukrainian parliament and international experts. Such a roster widens the frame from a national to a pan-European and transatlantic level, signaling that the North Caucasus is entering the security mainstream.
The normative direction of the discussion was set by the adopted Kyiv Declaration.
First, it fixes a strategic lens: the North Caucasus is a critical link in pan-European security; the threats are transnational (hybrid aggression, repression, deportations, disinformation) and require coordinated international responses. This turn implies abandoning the “all-Russia prism” in favor of viewing the North Caucasus as a distinct macro-region with its own elites and trajectory.
Second, the declaration sets an operational framework – a four-track roadmap, which makes the conversation reproducible within EU/NATO policy and at national levels:
- Legal (universal jurisdiction, documentation of crimes, support for applications to international courts);
- Sanctions (expansion of personal and sectoral measures for repression, mobilization, deportations, and cultural erasure);
- Humanitarian (protection of refugees and political prisoners, access to medical and psychological care, preservation of language and culture);
- Communications (countering disinformation, supporting independent media and expert analysis).
Third, much attention was dedicated to the Ukrainian pillar. Participants called on the Verkhovna Rada to take steps enabling “Ichkerian entities” to function within Ukraine’s legal field: recognize ChRI citizenship; provide for representation of ChRI citizens in third countries pending international recognition; grant the State Committee for the De-Occupation of the ChRI official status as an organ of national-liberation struggle; and launch a regular parliamentary dialogue. They also propose energizing cross-party caucuses and supporting draft law No. 11402 on engagement with national movements of the Russian Federation’s colonized peoples. Taken together, this moves moral-political declarations toward legally operable mechanisms.
External addressees are divided into two groups. The first – the European Parliament, PACE/NATO PA, and national parliaments – are urged to strengthen the parliamentary dimension of de-occupation policy, initiate public hearings and evidence-gathering missions, establish systematic dialogue with national-liberation movements, and expand sanctions lists, including accountability for the use of North Caucasus natives in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The second – governments and institutions of the EU/UK/Canada/US – are encouraged to integrate North Caucasus issues into strategic reviews and deterrence plans, and to support human rights, cultural heritage, and the languages of the Caucasus peoples.
A key infrastructural outcome was the decision to build an expert network and a public monitoring panel, Caucasus Watch – a tool that links human-rights reporting, sanctions tracking, and analysis, thereby reducing information asymmetries for policymakers and regulators. A dedicated grant track is envisioned for researchers working on law, security, and culture in the North Caucasus.
The tone of the discussion was well captured by remarks from Laura Lindermann of the United States (Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and Director of Programs at the Central Asia – Caucasus Institute at the American Foreign Policy Council). She noted Russia’s “strategic retrenchment” from the South Caucasus, the shift in the mediation architecture, and the vulnerability of three pillars of control in the North – hyper-securitization, budget transfers, and personal patronage networks (including the “Kadyrov model”). The weakening of these pillars increases the risks of local conflicts and terrorism, as well as the play of external actors; hence integrating the “Caucasus track” into the core of Euro-Atlantic strategies is a matter of prevention, not reaction.
From here flows the practical logic of the Kyiv Declaration: institutionalizing subjecthood, standardizing sanctions-legal work, producing verifiable data, and advancing parliamentary diplomacy. The expected outputs fall into three baskets:
- Legal (building out universal-jurisdiction cases and treaty-based procedures);
- Political (consolidating inter-parliamentary formats, including channels to movements and diasporas);
- Informational (reducing reliance on fragmentary testimony through a single data window (Caucasus Watch)).
The risks are evident: sanctions fatigue and bureaucratization; limited access to sources and witness security; competing external agendas. However, the very shift to an operational framework with clear addressees and instruments is already significant. The political will of parliaments and the cohesion of expert networks will be the key variables – both for implementing the Ukrainian pillar (including decisions on ChRI citizenship and the State Committee’s status) and for embedding the “Caucasus track” in EU/NATO strategies.
Kyiv has offered new arguments as well as a policy infrastructure, from legislation to enforcement. The trajectory ahead will be measured not by the volume of statements but by the speed of institutional steps and the quality of interagency coordination.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
The text of the Declaration signed in Kyiv is available in English, Russian and Ukrainian at this link
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