Residents of Chechnya treat video criticizing Abdurakhmanov as staged one

On April 20, the "Chechnya Today" News Agency posted a video entitled "Chechen youth addresses pseudo-patriotic bloggers". In the video, four young people express their negative attitude to an indefinite number of bloggers who criticize the authorities of Chechnya, and, in particular, to Tumso Abdurakhmanov – the only blogger named by the first hero of the story.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, wanted in Russia, is in Poland now. In September 2018, the country refused to grant him with asylum.

All the arguments of the heroes of the story in favour of the Chechen authorities are that they freely live in the republic; they study and go in for sports. " ... He [Tumso] doesn't think about his people and his republic; and he doesn't know what is happening here. He's just making money on it," one of the guys said in the video.

As of 1:15 a.m. Moscow time on April 22, this YouTube video gained at least 6595 views and received 115 comments. The number of negative marks is several times higher than the number of positive ones: 59 "likes" against 193 "dislikes". The authors of most comments found the clip to be a staged one.

"The more you make these hypocritical performances, the more you will be hated by people oppressed by you. Get ashamed and continue," wrote a user with the nickname Dudaev Alkhazur.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 22, 2019 at 02:11 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.