Latest North Caucasus Weekly Articles
Briefs
Insurgent Violence in Dagestan Shows No Signs of Letting UpA suspected member of an “illegal armed group” was killed in Dagestan’s Sergo-Kala district on March 4, Interfax reported. Dagestan’s Interior Ministry identified the dead militant as Magomedshakir Magomedov, a resident of Dagestan’s Kayakent district who... MORE
Kadyrov Again Invited Zakaev to Return to Chechnya
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has yet again called on Akhmed Zakaev, the London-based prime minister of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), to return home. Interfax on March 3 quoted Kadyrov as telling reporters that Zakaev no longer represents anyone in London and that... MORE
Kadyrov Defends Honor Killings
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said last week that the bodies of seven young women with gunshots to the head were found dumped by roadsides in Chechnya late last year and early this year (North Caucasus Weekly, December 4, 2008 and February 6, 2009) had “loose... MORE
Kadyrov Faces Fresh Accusations of Ordering Hits Abroad
Kavkaz TV, the video arm of Kavkaz-Center, the radical Islamist Chechen rebel website, this past week posted a video clip in which a young Chechen man, Ruslan Khalidov, claimed that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov employed him to kill Magomed Ocherhadji, a leader of the large... MORE
Six Policemen Killed in Ingushetia Bombing
Six policemen were killed and two injured in a bomb blast in Ingushetia on March 5. Russian news agencies, citing republican Interior Ministry sources, reported that the blast took place near the entrance to the village of Surkhakhi after law-enforcement officers discovered a roadside bomb... MORE
Wave of Unrest and Counter-Terrorist Operations Sweep the North Caucasus
Russia’s special services and police this past week resumed anti-terrorist operations against the members of the armed resistance movement across the North Caucasus. A steady stream of news has been pouring in from Dagestan that the law enforcement authorities there have been striking back against... MORE
Briefs
Aide to Ingushetia’s Chief Prosecutor MurderedInterfax reported on February 24 that Akhmed Torshkhoev, a senior aide to Ingushetia’s chief prosecutor, was shot and killed in Nazran. A source in the Investigative Committee of the federal Prosecutor General’s Office for Ingushetia told the news agency that... MORE
Rebels Attack Servicemen, Police in Chechnya
A serviceman with a Russian Defense Ministry special unit was severely wounded on February 23 when he stepped on a mine in Chechnya’s Shatoi district. According to Kavkazky Uzel, the incident took place in woods near the village of Kharsenoi during a special operation targeting... MORE
Five Militants Killed in Dagestan Operation
Security forces killed five suspected militants in three separate apartment sieges during a two-day operation in Dagestan, the Associated Press (AP) reported on February 22. The news agency quoted Makhachkala Police Chief Shamil Guseinov as saying that one of the alleged militants was killed on... MORE
Chechen-Ingush Deportation Anniversary Marked
February 23 was the 65th anniversary of Josef Stalin’s deportation of the Chechen and Ingush—accused by the Soviet dictator of collaborating with the Nazis—to Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Kavkazky Uzel reported on the day of this year's anniversary that all of Chechnya’s... MORE