Tensions between the authorities and civil society are rising in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria after the regional parliament agreed last month to consider amendments to the republic’s constitution.
Proposed by Kremlin-appointed regional prosecutor Nikolai Khabarov, the amendments would remove guarantees of Kabardino-Balkaria’s “statehood” and “territorial integrity and inviolability” from the republic’s supreme legal document.
If adopted, the changes would also strip the republic’s head of the formal status of “head of state” and remove their mandate to ensure Kabardino-Balkaria’s “security and territorial integrity.”
“The powers of Russia’s federal subjects are not sovereign powers, but part of a unified system of state power,” Khabarov told lawmakers when presenting the amendments to the region’s parliament last month, stressing that the amendments would merely bring Kabardino-Balkaria’s constitution into line with Russia’s supreme law.
But prominent civil society actors in Kabardino-Balkaria and members of the Circassian diaspora believe the changes would further erode the republic’s autonomy and set the region on a sure path to demise.
