The irony is that Russia itself had a decently sized nationalist movement with "stop feeding Caucasus!" as a slogan. That is, they wanted Caucasian republics to separate so that Russia wouldn't have to "waste money" on them, and to avoid free movement of people from there into territories that are predominantly ethnically Russian.

Yup, the Caucasus are only good for two things to the Russian state. Defense (the mountains are way easier to defend than the plains of southern Russia) and oil.