Buried 'Like Dogs': In Chechnya, Oppression Doesn't End With Death
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
The coverage leans on moral shock, as if outrage alone explains what’s happening in Chechnya. It is horrifying. But focusing only on a single tragedy can obscure the more important reality: this is a system, not a one off, and it survives because Moscow tolerates it.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
In the fall of 2022, Seda Suleimanova fled Chechnya for St. Petersburg to avoid being forced into an arranged marriage, as her older sisters were. She was forcibly returned in August 2023 -- and promptly disappeared.
A rights group that helped herescape Chechnyabelieves she was killed that November andburied"like a dog" on a roadside in her native village of Alkhan-Yurt. Such a fate is not so unusual: Known
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
The coverage leans on moral shock, as if outrage alone explains what’s happening in Chechnya. It is horrifying. But focusing only on a single tragedy can obscure the more important reality: this is a system, not a one off, and it survives because Moscow tolerates it.
What’s missing is the hard question of leverage. If a region can kidnap a woman across Russia and make her disappear, that is a failure of rule of law and public trust, not just “culture” or “tradition.” It also signals a Kremlin that treats basic rights as negotiable when convenient.
For Americans, this matters because Russia’s internal brutality is tied to its external behavior. A state that normalizes impunity at home rarely respects national sovereignty abroad. The principle at stake is simple: accountability is the foundation of institutional stability, and we should judge regimes accordingly.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.