Circassian National Movement Energized by Kyiv’s Recognition of Russian Genocide

Executive Summary:

• The Ukrainian parliament has voted to recognize Russian actions against the Circassians in the 19th century as an act of genocide—a move Circassians and human rights activists hope will lead other countries to follow.
• Moscow is working to blunt the impact of Ukraine’s actions and prevent other countries from following suit, as well as to block the return of Circassians to their homeland.
• As a result, the Circassians are newly energized both in the homeland and the diaspora. They expect to achieve more of their goals and become an ever-more central organizing group for other non-Russians challenging Moscow’s rule. 

On January 9, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada voted overwhelmingly for a resolution declaring that Russian actions during and at the end of the Russian invasion and occupation of Circassia were an act of genocide. Specifically, the resolution says that Russian actions between 1763 and 1864 bear “all the signs of genocide and that if such crimes were committed today, they would undoubtedly be recognized” as an act of genocide as defined by the UN Convention (Ukrainian National News, January 9; Circassia Today, January 10; Ukrainian Government Portal, accessed January 14). The declaration also says that the Ukrainian parliament seeks to honor “the memory of all the victims of this crime and to express its solidarity with the Circassian (Adyghe) people” and condemns in the strongest possible terms “the genocidal actions” of the Russian government. It further calls on the Russian Federation to recognize this action as a crime and to apologize for it. It also “recognized the right of the Circassian (Adyghe) people in the diaspora to repatriate to the lands of their former settlement in the northwestern Caucasus with the further realization of the right to national self-determination on their historical territory” and called on other countries to take similar steps.

The Circassian national movement has long aimed to restore a Circassian state in the North Caucasus that the Russian Empire destroyed during its 101-year-long campaign to annex that region. In pursuing this goal, the Circassian movement has three intermediate goals. First, they hope to receive international recognition of Russia’s actions, leaning the death or expulsion of 90 percent of Circassians as an act of genocide to the same degree that the terror famine was in Ukraine. Second, they look for the return of Circassians to their ethnic homeland. There are now some seven million Circassians in the diaspora compared to the only 700,000 today in their ethnic homeland. Third, they aim to overcome the Soviet-imposed and Russian-maintained division of the Circassian nation in the North Caucasus into smaller and more easily controlled nationalities and promote the revival of a common Circassian nation. Moscow has worked hard to block all three of these efforts. It fears what a united Circassian nation would mean not only for its control of the Caucasus but, more generally, given Circassian influence with other groups, for its domination of the periphery of the Russian empire. The Kremlin, however, has taken a major loss in the first goal as a result of Ukraine’s resolution, with the likelihood that its defeat will lead to other losses in the other two goals. (On these Circassian aspirations and Moscow’s moves against them, see Window on Eurasia, October 17, 2020, May 22, 2021, May 29, 2023; see EDM, May 19, 2022, May 23, June 22, September 20, 2023).

Circassians and their Ukrainian supporters have been seeking the adoption of such a declaration for more than a decade (see EDM, May 27, 2014). There was an upsurge in interest in such moves after Georgia took that step in 2011, another at the time of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which Putin organized on the very site of that genocide on its 150th anniversary. In the last three years since the Kremlin leader launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine, this interest increased given Kyiv’s interest in reaching out to non-ethnic Russians inside the Russian Federation (see Commentaries, February 10, 2014; see North Caucasus Weekly, May 20, 2013; see EDM, August 8, 2024; Window on Eurasia, October 20, November 9, 2022, August 2, 2024). The Circassians were especially energized after Kyiv recognized Chechnya as a temporarily occupied land and have worked closely with the Chechens and the Ukrainians since that time (see EDM, November 1, 2022).  

Overwhelmingly, Circassian activists have been jubilant about Ukraine’s decision (Kavkaz Realii, January 10; Kavkaz Uzel; Ekho Kavkaza, January 11). They are planning to expand their contacts with other governments, in the first instance in the Baltic countries, Poland, and Finland, hoping to secure additional declarations of this kind (Kavkaz Realii, January 10). They are discussing how to expand their contacts with other nationalities within the Russian Federation to form a common front to defeat Russian imperialism in Ukraine and win independence for all of them (Caucasusfree.com, accessed January 14). Additionally, they are working to form new and more comprehensive organizations, such as a common Circassian parliament that would link groups in the homeland and the diaspora closer together, and a newsletter in multiple languages about Circassian events to reach a broader international audience (Window on Eurasia, November 26, 2024).

Remarkably, a handful of Circassian groups have spoken out against Ukraine’s action, a reflection of Moscow’s efforts to control them to muddy the waters and weaken the Circassian movement (Aydınlık, January 12). The most prominent of these groups is the International Circassian Association (ICA), one many Circassians have long suspected of having been captured by Russian intelligence services and have since abandoned (see EDM, February 16, 2023; Window on Eurasia, July 2, 2020, May 4, 2022, February 1, 2023, January 11, 27, July 28, 2024). This latest and widely unpopular action by the ICA will reinforce such suspicions. It almost certainly will lead to its collapse, forcing Moscow to step up its efforts against other groups and to use repression even more widely against Circassian activists in Russia. Such moves, however, will backfire, highlighted by one of the Circassian’s greatest strengths. In the age of the Internet, what Moscow does in the diaspora or the Caucasus rapidly becomes known to the other, radicalizing opinion and reducing Moscow’s ability to control the situation of a nation, most of whose members are living beyond the direct control of the Russian state.

Due to the Circassians’ large population and influence among other groups, both within the Russian Federation and abroad, because they have allied themselves with Ukraine to block Russian mobilization in their regions, will become a bigger target for the Kremlin (see EDM, October 18, 2022). Moscow is likely to conclude that it now more than ever must use harsher repressive measures against the Circassians it can reach at home or abroad, attacking anyone who supports or even covers the Circassians, which the Jamestown Foundation has done for decades (e.g., Jamestown, May 29, 2020). This risks, however, further weakening Moscow’s position. The only thing constraining them from such attacks may be some familiarity with the words Gandhi reportedly used about struggles between repressive regimes and those who oppose them, which this author used in his remarks to the International Conference on Independent Circassia in Istanbul in August 2023 (Window on Eurasia, August 8, 2023). Ghandi said to have presciently observed first that the opponents of national movements ignore the latter, then laugh at them, then attack them, and finally, surrender to them. What the Ukrainian parliamentarians have done has likely brought that day closer. What Moscow is likely to do in response may bring it closer still.