Battle of the Border

Deputies want to take part in regional territorial disputes

Today the State Duma will consider in the first reading a bill on administrative boundaries between Russian regions. The “border” bill was introduced by a group of deputies representing different factions of the lower house. As Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade Mukhamed Tsikanov said yesterday, this project “has no essence, since it is pointless and does not really change anything.” According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the administrative boundaries of a region can be changed if a preliminary agreement is reached with neighbors, and then the consent of the Federation Council is obtained. Everything is simple and extremely clear. But the deputies decided to complicate the procedure and at the same time “check in at the constituency, saying: “I proposed a good law, but a bad government is against it. For example, according to the new law, before you begin to negotiate with your neighbors, you need to hold a referendum, having spent a fair amount on calling people to the polling stations, explaining it in the press, and, in fact, the referendum itself.

If the bill is adopted, it is possible that the regions will begin to look for a catch in it and try, “just in case,” to get hold of land at the expense of their neighbor. A wave of territorial disputes already hit Russia once in 1993-1994. Almost every subject then managed to take part in interregional discussions on a given topic, but the matter did not come to a discussion in the upper house.

Despite the abundance of comments by experts from the Institute of Comparative Legislation, which they outlined on six pages, proactive deputies did not abandon their attempts to pass the “border” bill. They also did not respond to the calls of the government, which is against “political speculation and making a fuss about nothing.” But neither personal conversations with deputies in the White House, nor the opinion of experts, it seems, will stop those who want to cover the whole of Russia with border pillars. However, according to a source in the White House, the bill will “survive” until the second reading at most. Firstly, this is quite enough for deputies to “get noticed”, and secondly, no one in their right mind would want to place pillars, for example, between Moscow and the Moscow region.

Marina ROMANOVA