Will the Caucasus lose its subsidies?

Interview with the President of the National Strategy Institute, Mikhail Remizov

- Michael, you mentioned several times during the press conference that the spending in the North Caucasus is unwise. In your opinion what should be done then? Deprive the region of subsidies entirely?

- The region cannot be deprived of subsidies, because more than half of the budgets of many of these republics are formed from subsidies. This practice will continue. The question is whether to take measures to develop complementary emergency investments. In my opinion, right now is a very unfavorable time for this, because at the moment this money is used as political and financial investment in the underground terrorist network. Financial in a sense that the terrorist underground to a large extent supports itself with racketeering local businesses and local governments. This situation has not been resolved. The more money is sent, the more money it receives. Politically, because one of the fundamental issues that is driving the underground is the terrible level of cronyism, corruption, social stratification, polarization and general injustice. This will be aggravated. Taking into consideration the current state of the institutions, this will be only aggravated by massive injections of money into the region. The money will be used by the clans currently in control of the country. And I am convinced that Khloponin alone is not enough to control it all, it is not possible. There are more fundamental reasons, which are related to the fact that the general economic improvement of this situation will not solve the problem of the terrorist war. It can solve it over very long periods of time - 10, 20, maybe 30 years. Unfortunately, a relatively short span of economic improvement will not decrease the intensity of war. Nor will modernization in general. So if we want to reduce military activity we should first of all work with the elites, introduce more control, more justice, more dialogues with civil society, greater firmness of the federal government towards the elites, but not to the societies. The societies are waiting for this to happen. The second issue is the serious, high-quality, intelligent work of the law enforcers and intelligence agencies. We cannot do anything without it. Perhaps a greater level of interaction between the presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District with the secret services, that is, the integration of military and financial power. These measures could change something.

Unfortunately, massive funding will not solve this problem. In addition, we see that this funding will be spent on the creation of a tourism cluster, which in a situation where war has not ended yet and will not end, judging from current trends, will be an ideal target for sabotage attacks.

Accordingly, a small group of saboteurs, and behind them political groups and security forces, will keep the whole country in danger. The country will take billions of dollars in loans, including from abroad and state guarantees, and will build some facilities, in the best possible course of events, while a handful of terrorists will keep the whole enterprise in danger, because on the one hand, the country will have to maintain these facilities to return the loans, but on the other hand, it would be impossible, due to the fact that any even slightly organized funded group can simply paralyze it completely. So, in my opinion, the prospects for solving the problems are first of all political and military: pressure on local leaders, the military and police and the work of intelligence agencies.

Maria Sidelnikova, exclusively to VK