The Tatarstan authorities acknowledged the existence of territorial disagreements with six neighboring regions, including Udmurtia. Similar problems arise in other federal subjects. Experts warn regional authorities against attempts to politicize such conflicts. Chairman of the State Council of the Republic Committee on State Building and Local Self-Government Alexander Fedorov told Kommersant about territorial problems with other regions. According to him, disagreements exist with Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Ulyanovsk and Samara regions. “For example, our city of Agryz has ‘invaded’ the territory of Udmurtia,” he said. “What happened, one might say, was a self-seizure of someone else’s land.” Minister of Justice of Tatarstan Midhat Kurmanov, confirming to Kommersant the existence of the disputed territories, said that the republic occupied 2,800 hectares of someone else's area, and other entities - 3,800 hectares of land.

The Rosnedvizhimost administration in Udmurtia confirmed the fact of unauthorized seizure of land by the city of Agryz and reported that the two republics are trying to resolve this issue. Specialist-expert of the Rosnedvizhimost department for Udmurtia Tatyana Shutova explained that “issues of changing the boundaries of territories are resolved at the federal level. In order to start this process, it is necessary for Tatarstan to turn to Udmurtia with such an initiative. But there have been no such requests yet.”

As Mr. Fedorov told Kommersant, Tatarstan will not yet raise the issue of coordinating borders, since “first we need to complete the description of the boundaries of the territories of municipalities.” Mr. Kurmanov explained to Kommersant that in order to correct the boundaries of the constituent entities, it is necessary to first sign an agreement between the regions, which must be approved by the parliaments of the constituent entities, and then by the Federation Council.

The head of regional programs of the Information Policy Development Foundation, Alexander Kynev, assesses Tatarstan’s conflict with its neighbors not as a territorial dispute, but as a “problem of land use.” “A territorial dispute is when there is a territory that belongs to one region, and another region believes that it should belong to it. This, for example, is the border conflict between Chechnya and Ingushetia, Ingushetia and North Ossetia,” said Mr. Kynev. — And in Tataria, this is a type of dispute when economic entities of the regions climbed onto some lands that formally belong to other regions. This is not a problem between regions, but a problem of the activities of economic entities.”

However, similar conflicts with the active participation of local authorities occur in other regions. Thus, the other day, Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Moscow Region Vasily Gromov announced the need to create a conciliation commission on the issue of delimiting territories between the region and Moscow. In turn, Chairman of the Moscow City Duma Vladimir Platonov noted that the problems exist due to the fact that “the issue of unification” of the two subjects of the federation has not been resolved.

Natalya Zubarevich, director of regional programs at the Independent Institute for Social Policy, told Kommersant that negotiations on resolving such disputes are “a great way to improve horizontal relations of interaction between the constituent entities of the federation.” “Well, this problem is not being solved through the Kremlin,” says Ms. Zubarevich.
Policy Department

Kommersant (Perm) No. 121 from 07/15/2008

Tatarstan crossed the border of Udmurtia