Deadly Firefights Continue

Talk of “normalization” continues in Chechnya and neighboring regions, but so does the fighting and dying. Two police officers in the Stavropol province of southern Russia were killed in firefights with gunmen from the northern Caucasus last week, according to a March 15 article in Novaya gazeta. On March 10 the gunmen mounted a surprise attack on a police car near Mineralynye Vody, killing one of its two occupants and wounding the other. The local interior ministry and FSB directorates set up road blocks; the gunmen responded with a daring raid on a police station, killing another officer. The Russian security agencies finally caught up with the attackers on the following night and shot dead all four of them early on March 12.