Latest North Caucasus Weekly Articles
Two Policemen Murdered in Kabardino-Balkaria
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed two policemen in Kabardino-Balkaria on July 13, Interfax reported. The two policemen were guarding the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Baksan Neutrino Observatory, located in Kabardino-Balkaria’s Baksan gorge, when they were attacked. They were identified as Magomet Sapabashev and Arsen Mezhgikhov,... MORE
Police and Servicemen Attacked, Lawyer’s Relatives Abducted in Chechnya
Unidentified attackers wounded a policeman in a drive-by shooting in the Chechen town of Vedeno on July 16, Kavkazky Uzel reported. The gunmen shot the policeman, who was guarding a building housing a branch of the Russian Pension Fund, from a Zhiguli automobile and managed... MORE
Putin Pays a Surprise Visit to Botlikh
President Vladimir Putin made an unexpected trip to Botlikh, Dagestan, on February 4. The town, which is located near the republic's border with Chechnya, is where the Russian Defense Ministry's 33rd Motorized Infantry Highland Brigade has been deployed since last year under a decree that... MORE
Three Policemen Killed in Kabardino-Balkaria
Three policemen were shot and killed in Baksan, a town in Kabardino-Balkaria, July 7. “Criminals attacked a highway patrol post situated in the so-called Baksan circle and shot dead three members of the police with an automatic weapon,” Interfax quoted a local police source as... MORE
Chechnya Remains the Epicenter of the North Caucasus Insurgency
Faced with a surge of Russian news media reports about daily armed skirmishes in Chechnya, official Moscow is trying to defuse the tension by deploying its usual crude propaganda tactics. To name just one, the Russian cabinet’s presidium passed an extremely well-publicized resolution to invest... MORE
Salafists and Sufis Square Off Over Chechnya
From July 5 to July 7, an international Islamic conference entitled “The Place and Role of Sufism in the Islamic World,” which gathered together more than 200 clergymen from Russia and other countries, was held in the Chechen town of Gudermes. According to official sources,... MORE
Ingush Opposition Leaders Demand Aushev’s Return
The campaign to gather signatures on a petition calling for the return of Ruslan Aushev as Ingushetia’s president has been completed. According to the opposition Ingushetiya.ru website, leaders of the opposition to Ingushestia’s current president, Murat Zyazikov, said during a press conference in Moscow on... MORE
Briefs
Strasbourg Court Orders Moscow to Compensate Kidnapped Chechens’ Relatives In the latest ruling against the Russian government in a case involving Chechnya, the European Court of Human Rights on July 3 ordered Moscow to pay a total of 175,000 euros ($275,000) in compensation to relatives... MORE
Chechen Interior Ministry Sources Doubt Umarov is Surrounded
Two members of the Interior Ministry Internal Troops’ special Yug (South) battalion were wounded in a shootout with militants in a wooded area near the village of Eshelkhatoi in Chechnya’s Vedeno district on July 7, Kavkazky Uzel reported. A Chechen police source told the website... MORE
Militants Kill Three in Ingush Village
On July 11, unknown gunmen attacked a car in which policemen were traveling in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Ingushetia, wounding three of them. A source in Ingushetia’s Investigative Committee told RIA Novosti that the attackers fired grenade launchers and automatic weapons at the vehicle. On... MORE