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41. North Caucasus Weekly: Rebels Reportedly Kill Dozens of Servicemen in Ingushet

Author:
Mairbek Vatchagaev
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Following the capture of the foothill villages of Muzhichi and Yandare in Ingushetia on the evening of October 16 (North Caucasus Weekly, October 16), militants from the Ingush Jamaat “Shariat” carried out another series of high-profile actions against Russian troops. According to various sources, more than 50 Russian military personnel were killed and wounded in two assaults by the militants on the Galashki Highway on October 18, which would make this the most audacious attack by the jamaat members in Ingushetia to date. According to the media reports, the attack on the Russian military motorcade took place on the Alkhasty-Surkhokhi road in Ingushetia's Nazran district at ten in the morning. According to Ingush Prosecutor General Yury Turygyn, only two soldiers were killed and five were wounded in the attack. All of them were from Interior Ministry detachments based in the village of Alkhasty (RIA Novosti, October 18) According to Turygyn, the assault was carried out by members of “illegal armed formations” with the purpose of destabilizing the situation in the region. Turygyn, however, was apparently referring to the casualties in an attack on another column of servicemen that had occurred earlier on October 18, and the Regnum News Agency quoted a source in the Interior Ministry department forIngushetia's Sunzha district as saying that all the soldiers in the column targeted in the second attack were killed except forone and that the total number killed was around 50. The surviving serviceman was transported to the Sunzha Central District Hospital, the source said (www.regnum.ru/news/1071507.html). Thus, according to the Ingush police, two attacks took place, not one, as the Ingush Prosecutor General's Office claims.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

42. North Caucasus Weekly:Vostok and Zapad Battalions to be “Reorganized"

Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
The deputy commander of Russia's army, Colonel General Vladimir Moltenskoi, announced on November 8 that the two Chechen-manned special force battalions of the Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), Vostok and Zapad, will be reformed into companies of the Defense Ministry's 42nd Motor Rifle Division, which isbased in Chechnya. According to RIA Novosti, Moltenskoi announced the reorganization at a meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny. However, there was some confusion about the battalions' fate: Interfax quoted the Chechen president's press service as saying that Moltenskoi had said the battalions would be disbanded. Yet Moltenskoi told Interfax on November 8 that the units would not be disbanded but rather reorganized into companies within the 42nd Motor Rifle Division. Interfax on November 10 quoted Kadyrov's press service as saying that it had been stated during the meeting between the Chechen president and Moltenskoi onNovember 8 that the criminal investigation committee of the Russian Prosecutor General had ordered the Chechen Interior Ministry to bring Sulim Yamadaev to interrogators by force. Prague Watchdog reported on November 10 that the Chechen Interior Ministry had received a formal request on November 7 that Sulim Yamadaev be sent to the Gudermes district investigative unit for questioning. According to the website, Yamadaev is the principal suspect in the case of the murder of aGudermes district resident committed ten years ago.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

43. North Caucasus Weekly: Ingushetia's Parliament Confirms New Presiden

Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Ingushetia's parliament on October 31 confirmed Yunus-Bek Yevkurov as the republic's president, replacing Murat Zyazikov, who resigned the previous day (North Caucasus Weekly, October 31). According to Itar-Tass, 16 legislators out of the 18 who attended the session voted to confirm the 45-year-old colonel, while one voted against and one ballot was invalidated. The news agency reported that Yevkurov was born into an ethnic Ingush family in North Ossetia and graduated from the Ryazan Higher School of Airborne Troops in 1989. In 2004, he graduated from the Academy of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Russia's highest military education institution. In 1999, Yevkurov commanded a unit of Russian paratroopers that entered Kosovo and took control of the international airport ahead of the forces of other countries. As the Moscow Times wrote on November 1, Russian media reported that Yevkurov led the 200-man contingent that caught NATO off guard by racing from Bosnia to Kosovo to occupy the airport in Kosovo's capital of Pristina, an operation at the end of the Kosovo war that “risked a dangerous confrontation with NATO troops, who were also heading to the airport.” According to the English-language newspaper, it was later revealed that an armed clash was only averted because the local NATO commander, British General Michael Jackson, refused to be involved in a conflict that could “start World War III.” However, Itar-Tass, in its description of the incident, wrote that the Russian race to occupy the airport in Pristina “went down in the history of the Russian Airborne Troops as one of the most successful peacekeeping operations.”
Topic:
Security, NATO, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Bosnia, Asia, and Kosovo

44. North Caucasus Weekly: Zyazikov Steps Dow

Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
On October 30, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree ordering an early end to Murat Zyazikov's term as Ingushetia's president, Itar-Tass reported, citing the Russian presidential press service. Zyazikov, the former KGB general who headed Ingushetia for six and a half years, said that his resignation as Ingushetia's president was absolutely voluntary and connected to his transfer to another job. “I will be working in Moscow,” Interfax quoted him as saying. Zyazikov did not indicate what his new job would be.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Asia, and Moscow

45. Jamestown Foundation: August 2007

Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
A person claiming to belong to the Chechen extremist group Riyadus-Salikhin (Gardens of the Righteous) called the North Caucasus Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to claim responsibility for the bomb explosion that derailed the Nevsky Express passenger train traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg on the evening of August 13, RFE/RL reported on August 15. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, the bombing, which derailed the train near the city of Novgorod, about 500 kilometers north of Moscow, and injured dozens of people, was caused by a homemade bomb equal to two kilograms of TNT.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia and Moscow

46. Chechnya Weekly: Rebels Reportedly Becoming More Active

Author:
Andrei Smirnov and Mayrbek Vachagaev
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
Kavkazky Uzel reported on July 4 that the “armed formations of the separatists” have become noticeably more active in recent days, with armed clashes between the rebels and security forces taking place in Chechnya's mountains and foothills. “In Chechnya, rumors are actively being spread that in the coming months the militants may launch a series of large-scale offensive actions for the purpose of demonstrating their real capabilities,” the website wrote. “Some time ago, information appeared that the separatist leader Dokka Umarov demanded that members of the republic's law-enforcement bodies quit their jobs, promising 'amnesty' in exchange.” Kavkazky Uzel quoted a Grozny resident, identified only as Sakhab, as saying: “Several weeks ago, leaflets with an appeal from Dokka Umarov to the employees of the police force were found in various places. Apparently, they said that those policemen who do not quit their jobs soon will be destroyed. Those who 'come to their senses' were promised amnesty.”
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia

47. Chechnya Weekly: Observers differ over how many rebels took amnesty offer...

Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
The Russian government's amnesty for rebels in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus, announced last July by Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev acting in his capacity as head of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK), expired on January 15.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

48. Chechnya Weekly: More violence and unrest in dagestan

Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

49. Chechnya Weekly: Volume 8, Issue 1

Author:
Andrei Smirnov
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
North Caucasus Weekly (formerly Chechnya Weekly), The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
On January 3, a shootout between gunmen and police in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala left a police officer and two local residents wounded and one gunman dead. Citing Dagestan's Interior Ministry, ITAR-TASS reported that the incident took place around 5PM Moscow time on Ganidov Prospekt in Makhachkala, when police tried to stop a Zhiguli car for a document check and someone inside the vehicle fired on them. One of the gunmen was killed in the ensuing gun battle while the three others in the car managed to escape. One of the escaping gunmen may have been wounded. Interfax quoted a Makhachkala police official as saying that two local residents were slightly injured in the gunfight and that the life of the wounded policeman, shot in the leg, was not in danger.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia and Moscow

50. The Jamestown Foundation: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Publication Date:
08-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Abstract:
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has decided not to disband parliament. Instead, he nominated Viktor Yanukovych, who lost the presidential election to him in December 2004, for prime minister. These were the only two options that Yushchenko faced after the Orange coalition between his Our Ukraine bloc and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc fell apart in early July, and the left-of-center majority of Yanukovych' Party of Regions, the Socialists, and the Communists nominated Yanukovych for prime minister. Our Ukraine is now joining the majority; Tymoshenko, having dismissed the compromise between Yushchenko and Yanukovych as “betrayal,” goes into the opposition.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, and Ukraine