Chechen authorities have evidence that two districts currently part of Ingushetia used to be a part of Chechnya, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Tuesday.
On August 26 Kadyrov said that Chechnya is set to ask federal authorities to demarcate an administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia, which he said is encroaching on Chechen land.
Kadyrov said that Chechnya can substantiate its request to make Ingushetia’s Sunzhensky and a part of the Malgobek district a part of Chechnya.
“We have archival documents proving that those districts are a part of the Chechen Republic. The Republic of Ingushetia has no such documents, and never had… It was merged with Chechnya only in 1934,” Kadyrov said at an extended session of the Chechen government.
He added that “the Chechen side will act solely on the basis of Russian Federation laws” in solving its administrative border issue with Ingushetia.
The press service of Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov posted on its website a statement on the issue by a State Duma lawmaker Belan Khamchiyev.
He called on leaders of the two republics to rule out all mutual accusations on the issue, saying they are “extremely dangerous.”
“Attempts by any side to review the existing borders groundlessly and outside the legal framework might entail a chain reaction of territorial claims and breed new conflicts,” Khamchiyev said.
He said that at the moment two republican commissions have been set up to lay down the procedure of defining administrative borders.
The Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Republic, a single administrative entity in the Soviet Union, split in December 1992.