Two police posts opened at the border between Chechnya and Dagestan
On 16 November, two new stationary posts of Chechen Police were opened in the Shelkovskoy District on the border with Dagestan, reported the Caucasian Knot.
Local residents fear that the new posts will complicate the traffic among the republics. Chechen authorities have stated that the measure is needed in order to to control the border section with Dagestan. The opening of the police posts happened less than a year after the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov offered to remove all the checkpoints in Northern Caucasus.
Political analyst, Alexander Perendjiev did not rule out that the posts appeared in connection with the suspension of the demarcation process of Chechen-Dagestani border. "Kadyrov would like to control the whole situation in his own country and, in a sense, to close up from other republics,” he said.
Ruslan Gereev, an Islamic scientist, believes that the security situation in the region is improving every year and that the erection of the block posts has to do with the New Year period. In his opinion, the new posts could not appear against Kadyrov's will.
On 2 April, the Daghestani parliament sent a letter of protest to the Chechen Parliament, the Russian Federal Registration Service and the Russian President’s Representative in the North Caucasus. The letter of protest asked them to cancel the ‘unilateral’ demarkation of the borders. The letter came in response to Chechnya having registered an area of around 80 hectares of land near the village of Novomonastirskoye, in Dagestan’s Kizlyar District, as belonging to Chechnya.
On 16 April, the chairs of the Chechen and Dagestani parliaments, Magomed Daudov and Khizri Shikhsaidov respectivly, officially announced they were suspending work to enter information on the border into the official state register. The authorities of both republics did not comment on the reasons behind the decision.