On January 4, the publication Kavkaz.Realii reported on another criminal case filed against a woman who returned from Syria, where she followed her husband. A resident of Dagestan with many children is accused of terrorism - involvement in the Islamic State banned in Russia. The woman is under arrest and faces up to 20 years in prison.
On January 13, the Makhachkala Garrison Court released information about the completion of the trial in the case of contract soldier from Dagestan Pirbudag Alikhanov. A serviceman from a military unit stationed in Buinaksk received a concussion and frostbite on his legs during a military operation in Ukraine, but was unable to receive payments because his commander did not fill out the documents properly. He filed an administrative claim against the commander, after which the command conducted an investigation, recognized Alikhanov as a combat veteran and sent documents to the leadership of the Southern Military District to formalize this status.
On January 16, live on the ya_pomoshnik_kra_95 platform on Instagram (this social network is recognized as extremist in Russia and is blocked), the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, answering questions from the head of the regional Ministry of Nationalities Akhmed Dudayev, spoke about the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine and called on the male population of the Caucasus and Russia to prepare for continuation of mobilization.
On January 17, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced four residents of Ingushetia who were found guilty of participating in the international terrorist organization “Islamic State” and of planning to blow up the buildings of police units in the city of Sunzha. Three of the convicts were minors at the time of the crime.
On January 24, the European Court of Human Rights issued a decision in the case of Kutaev v. Russia. He satisfied the complaint of the applicant - a Chechen politician, human rights activist, deputy prime minister in Maskhadov's government, chairman of the Assembly of Caucasian Peoples Ruslan Kutaev, who served four years on trumped-up charges of drug possession.
On January 26, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don ordered an additional psychological and linguistic examination of the publications of Dagestani journalist Abdulmumin Gadzhiev, accused of financing terrorism.
On February 1, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili said in an interview with Bloomberg that after the end of the war in Ukraine, Russia must return the occupied territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgia.
On February 1, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Stalingrad, a monument to Joseph Stalin was solemnly opened in Volgograd. Memorials were also erected to Marshals Alexander Vasilevsky and Georgy Zhukov.
On February 9, the Chechen parliament unanimously approved amendments to the Constitution of the republic, according to which the head of the region began to be called “mekhk-da,” which literally translates from Chechen as “father of the region,” but in this context is used to mean “father of the people.” In addition, an addition was made to the Basic Law of Chechnya that the head is the guarantor of the “rights and freedoms of man and citizen” in the region and is responsible for territorial integrity and the maintenance of peace and harmony.
On February 23, mourning rallies were held in Paris to mark the anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of Chechens and Ingush on February 23, 1944. Participants in the rallies not only honored the memory of the victims of mass repressions, but also spoke out against Russian aggression in Ukraine.
On January 2, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, announced that by the end of 2022, the Ukrainian army had managed to liberate 40% of the territories occupied by Russia since the beginning of the invasion.
On January 4, the founder of Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that the first group of Russian prisoners recruited by the company to participate in the war in Ukraine had completed a six-month contract. All criminal records were cleared from the mercenaries.
The UN dissolved the commission of inquiry into the deaths of Ukrainian prisoners in a colony in the Donetsk region in July 2022, because it could not obtain security guarantees for investigators from participants in the armed conflict in Ukraine.
Fierce fighting is taking place in the area of Bakhmut and Soledar. According to the US authorities, Yevgeny Prigozhin seeks to take control of salt and gypsum deposits in the Donetsk region, this explains the activity of the Wagnerites near Bakhmut.
Russian troops attacked a perinatal center in Kherson. A powerful blast wave knocked out the windows in the children's department and damaged one of the doctors' offices. There is a victim. The center worker received minor injuries, but her life is not in danger.
The Agency reported that on the territory of Ukraine, wounded Russian military personnel are returned to the combat zone without a decision from the military medical commission, which is contrary to the law.
The death toll in the Dnieper from a Russian missile strike has reached 45 people, including 4 children. 79 people were injured. About 30 people are listed as missing. The missile could be launched at a multi-storey residential building in the Dnieper by the 52nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Russian Air Force.
As a result of shelling of residential areas of Kherson, three people were killed and six were injured. Volley fire was applied to populated areas of Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Kharkov and Chernigov regions.
To the north of Bakhmut there are battles for the village of Blagodatnoye.
Russian troops shelled the territory of the Kherson region 42 times using multiple launch rocket systems, mortars and artillery. One person was killed, one was injured.
In the Donetsk region, 4 civilians were killed as a result of shelling.
In Urus-Martan, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB shot at a native of Chechnya and British citizen Magomed Abubakarov. He is seriously injured and hospitalized. The man was accused of using violence against a government official and illegal possession of weapons, the Memorial Human Rights Center reported.
The telegram channel “Asians of Russia” published a video appeal from those mobilized from Tuva to the authorities with a complaint about violence by units from the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
The State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption has prepared amendments on criminal and administrative liability for “discrediting” participants in hostilities, including volunteers.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reports record losses of the Russian army, including due to unsuccessful attempts to attack Ugledar. Thus, over the past 24 hours, 1,140 Russian military personnel have been eliminated. The total losses of the Russian Federation in manpower reached 136,880 killed.
Those mobilized from Kaliningrad said that they were thrown into battle without preparation. Russia continues its offensive in the area of Kupyansk, Liman, Bakhmut, Avdeevka and the village of Novopavlovka. In the Kursk region, one person was killed and another was wounded as a result of shelling from Ukraine.
The Gray Zone Telegram channel published a video of the extrajudicial execution of a former Russian prisoner, who allegedly went to war with Ukraine as part of the Wagner PMC, surrendered to the Ukrainian military, and was then kidnapped by former colleagues and executed with a sledgehammer blow to the head.
Heavy fighting for Bakhmut continues. Russian media report the advance of the Wagner PMC north of Bakhmut in the village of Paraskovievka. Ukrainian sources claim that southwest of Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces managed to push back Russian troops in the area of the village of Ivanovskoye.
Vladimir Putin, in his message to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, accused the West: “It was they who started the war. And we used force and are using it to stop it!”
Yevgeny Prigozhin said that the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense is seeking to destroy the Wagner PMC and equated this to treason. According to him, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov prohibited helping PMCs with transport, ammunition and even sapper shovels.
On the anniversary of the invasion, rallies in support of Ukraine are held in many cities around the world under the slogan “Light will conquer darkness.” Participants in anti-war protests in Russia are detained by the police.
The publication “People of Baikal” published a video message from those mobilized from the Irkutsk region to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They report that the DPR command, to which they were handed over, is sending them “to slaughter”, urging them on with machine gun fire.
The trial of Zagir Yakubov and Rasul Mailubaev from the Stavropol Territory has already been completed. The Supreme Court of Dagestan sentenced both to 14 years of maximum security for participation in an attack on Russian military personnel in the Botlikhsky district of Dagestan.
All these cases are united not only by some delay in retribution. Lawyers note that the charges are “tailored” according to one template: no objective evidence, only the testimony of previously convicted persons, which are also classified. Their names are unknown, their faces are hidden even in court, so their evidence cannot be verified or refuted.
As Memorial found out, cases of attacks on Pskov paratroopers are being investigated by one group of investigators from the Main Investigations Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the North Caucasus Federal District, and its core composition does not actually change.
Over the years, the number of these criminal cases is only growing. The wording in the documents is copied and migrated from one criminal case to another, only the names change.
The aforementioned list of 69 captured militants, allegedly compiled back in 2000, but first surfaced only 20 years later in the case of M. Bashaev, convicted by the Shatoisky District Court in November 2021, also raises doubts. Despite the defense's requests, the list remains classified. Only fragments from it appear in the cases, so law enforcement officers still have sufficient groundwork for future charges.
On the night of January 21, a detainee died in the police department of the Sovetsky district of Makhachkala. Relatives reported torture. An investigation is underway into the case of “exceeding official authority, which negligently resulted in the death of the victim.”
On January 8, the Chechen opposition telegram channels 1ADAT and NIYSO reported mass kidnappings by security forces in the village of Alkhan-Kala, located 15 kilometers from Grozny. According to the chairman of the United Force movement, Dzhambulat Suleymanov, Kadyrov’s supporters could consider the villagers an “anti-government cell” because of their interest in an “unreliable” Internet resource.
On January 19, the European Court of Human Rights issued a decision in the case of the death of Chechen-Kist Temirlan Machalikashvili during a special operation in the Pankisi Gorge in 2017. The court declared the investigation into the case ineffective and awarded his family 25 thousand euros in compensation.
On January 4, rallies were held in Georgia and other countries around the world in support of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. The protesters demanded that the Georgian authorities allow the prisoner Saakashvili to continue treatment in a foreign clinic. He is now in the Vivamedi clinic in Tbilisi due to complications after a long hunger strike.
On January 20, exactly a year after Zarema Musaeva was detained, her son, Chechen activist and blogger Abubakar Yangulbaev recorded a video message in which he invited the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to exchange himself for his mother.
On January 3, in front of the Croatian Embassy in Vienna, a rally of representatives of the Chechen diaspora took place, protesting against the extradition of refugees who are fleeing to Europe from mobilization in Russia and encountering opposition on the borders of the Balkan countries.
During the years of the second Russian-Chechen armed conflict, thousands and thousands of people were kidnapped and disappeared into obscurity. If for some of them relatives have guesses and suspicions that they were taken away on some, albeit often dubious, basis, then why were others kidnapped? This remains a mystery to this day. Death squads are behind many of these crimes.
On January 16, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don handed down another sentence to a native of Ingushetia, Ali Taziev, a militant commander known as “Amir Magas.” He was sentenced to life imprisonment in a special regime colony for several serious crimes committed in 2009-2010.
