A resident of Ingushetia asked Kadyrov to intervene in the family conflict over the child.

The ex-husband took the six-month-old child, then during a conflict, stabbed one of the brothers, and after the reconciliation of the parties and the court's decision to return the child to the mother, he began to seek criminal prosecution of the brothers, demanding in return to give up the child, complained a resident of Ingushetia, Ramina Gandaloeva, in a video appeal to the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Gandaloeva accused her ex-husband of exerting pressure through the criminal prosecution of the brothers

According to the resident of Ingushetia Ramina Gandaloeva, her ex-husband separated her from her six-month-old child and then began to use the criminal prosecution of her brothers to pressure her. The girl recorded a video appeal to the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov.

"I, Gandaloeva Ramina, my appeal to Ramzan Akhmatovich Kadyrov. I am a mother who has been separated from my six-month-old child without legal grounds," the girl stated in the video appeal, which was published on October 13 by the Instagram*-public news_ingushetii.

According to Gandaloeva, on January 28, 2024, her ex-husband beat her and took the child, demanding to resolve the issue of the child's residence through a Sharia court. However, he did not appear for the hearing, after which he ceased communication with her and her relatives.

On May 20, 2024, the girl's brother, Mikail Gandaloev, noticed the car of his sister's ex-husband on Moscow Street in Malgobek and tried to find out why he was avoiding communication and not allowing her to see the child. According to Ramina Gandaloeva, her ex-husband pulled out a knife, after which Mikail hit him in self-defense. The second brother of the girl, Amir Gandaloev, intervened in the conflict, trying to take the knife away. Then witnesses separated the participants in the fight. As a result, Mikail received multiple stab wounds to the head, which, according to his sister, still affect his health and ability to work.

After the fight, the ex-husband filed a complaint against the girl's brothers, accusing them of group assault. Gandaloeva claims that Amir did not strike, which, according to her, is confirmed by surveillance camera footage. In August 2024, with the participation of the elders of the ex-husband's clan, the parties reached a reconciliation in the ancestral settlement of Plieva. The girl said that her ex-husband and Mikail forgave each other, shook hands, and agreed to drop mutual claims.

However, after the court's decision to have the child live with the mother, her ex-husband, according to Gandaloeva, again began to seek criminal prosecution of the brothers. The girl also stated that she was offered to give up the child in exchange for dropping the case.

"However, after the court made a decision to establish the child's residence with me, [the ex-husband] renewed the complaint. I was directly offered to write a waiver of the child to avoid prosecution of the brothers. Six months after the incident, in December 2024, [the ex-husband] summoned two witnesses from the Chechen Republic," she said.

Gandaloeva called the witnesses' testimonies contradictory. According to her, they described a person with light hair and blue eyes, which does not match the appearance of her brother Mikail. In addition, the girl stated that the witnesses could not identify other participants in the conflict, did not see a knife in the hands of her ex-husband, and do not attend court hearings to confirm their testimonies. According to her, these people are not present in the video recordings from the scene.

Gandaloeva also stated that two witnesses from Chechnya were not present during the fight. She asked Ramzan Kadyrov and the residents of Chechnya to assist in stopping the prosecution of her brothers.

"I ask to understand why our Chechen brotherly people intervened in a domestic conflict between Ingush that does not concern them at all. I also believe that [the ex-husband] violated the terms of the reconciliation concluded in the presence of witnesses, uses false testimonies to pressure me and persecute my brothers. I ask the authorized bodies to objectively investigate the situation," Gandaloeva stated.

This post in the Instagram*-public news_ingushetii, which has about 316 thousand users, had 691 likes and 631 comments as of 08:40 Moscow time on October 14.

Gandaloeva's video appeal to Ramzan Kadyrov sparked debates among commentators. Some users supported the girl, condemned the separation of a mother from her child, and considered it unacceptable to use children to pressure ex-spouses. Others doubted the credibility of her story, stated the need to hear the other side, and criticized the appeal to the head of Chechnya as a possible attempt to influence the judicial proceedings in Ingushetia. Some participants in the discussion argued about who children should stay with after a divorce from the perspective of religious norms and local customs.

Human rights activists pointed to the practice of separating mothers from children after divorce in the North Caucasus

"Caucasian Knot" has repeatedly reported on family conflicts in the North Caucasus, in which after divorce women lost the opportunity to raise children or communicate with them. In Chechnya and Ingushetia, there is a tradition according to which children remain in the father's family, and the divorced woman returns to her parental home.

Human rights activists link this practice to the notion of children's belonging to the father's clan. According to the founder of the project "Caucasus Without a Mother" Lidia Mikhalchenko, sometimes parents are willing to take their divorced daughter back but demand that she leave the children in the family of the ex-husband. In addition, children can become a means of pressure on a woman after the marriage ends.

One of the high-profile cases was the story of a resident of Chechnya Anna Aladyshova. After nine years of marriage, she divorced her husband, who, according to her, allowed her to see her two daughters only two hours a month under his control. The woman also complained about an attack by a relative of her ex-husband and public harassment. After the publicity of the story by human rights activists and the intervention of Aishat Kadyrova, Aladyshova was able to return her daughters.

In Ingushetia, a similar conflict occurred in the family Asya Heroeva. In December 2025, she complained that her ex-husband and his relatives were preventing her from meeting her children, although the court had established a communication order with them. When the woman came to her ex-husband's house with her mother and aunt, her former mother-in-law, according to Heroeva, attacked them with a stick. A video recording was attached to the appeal, in which an elderly woman strikes another woman.

"I do not seek to take the children away forever – I just want to see them, spend time according to the court's decision, and then return them to their father," Heroeva explained in her appeal.

Disputes over child custody can last for years even after court decisions. For example, a resident of Ingushetia Roza Sadakieva fought for the custody of two children who remained in the family of her ex-husband Akmed Torshkhoyev. Despite the conclusion of the guardianship authorities about the favorable living conditions for the children with their mother, in 2022, the Magas District Court denied the woman in her claims.