June 2, 2001

  ***

On the night of June 2, in the village of Alkhan-Yurt, Urus-Martan district, Ruslan Zelimkhanovich Bachaev was killed by unknown people using automatic weapons. As a result of a night attack, Zelimkhan Bachaev, the father of the victim, received a gunshot wound. In serious condition, he was taken to the Urus-Martan district hospital.

  ***

Viktor Popkov died in a military hospital in Krasnogorsk. He died of wounds received on April 18 in the village of Alkhan-Kala, Grozny district, when an unknown person shot at point-blank range in a car in which, in addition to Popkov, there were driver Kureysh Elikhanov and a doctor from the Grozny city hospital No. 9, Roza Muzarova. They were also wounded. As a human rights activist working in "hot spots", Viktor Popkov has become known since the late 1980s. He tried to stop or prevent violence, to help innocent victims of conflicts. He came to the aid of people in Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia, and for this, and also for the fact that wherever fate threw him, he conducted anti-war, pacifist propaganda, and was arrested more than once.

During the first Russian-Chechen war, at the risk of his life, he rescued dozens of Russian soldiers from captivity. Secondly, having spent many months in Chechnya, he distributed a huge amount of humanitarian aid to the victims. But most importantly, he recorded and filmed the crimes committed by the Russian military and law enforcement officers against the civilian population of the republic. And more than once he was arrested.
Viktor Popkov created his own human rights organization Omega and was a member of several others. At the same time, he worked for Civic Assistance, was a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta and a member of the Memorial Society.
 
From the memoirs of Natalia Estemirova:
“... Viktor Popkov came for the third time in the spring. This time he brought medicines that the locals needed so much, and a doctor, Roza Muzayeva, who examined the patients and prescribed these medicines. They distributed everything they had brought and went to Grozny to get a new batch. Roza said that she would like to visit her mother, who lives in the village of Alkhan-Kala in the Grozny region. Viktor Alekseevich decided that they would all go together in a car that he had bought specifically to drive around the mountain villages. Rosa's mother was ill and they decided to stay overnight, despite the persuasion of the driver, Kureysh Elikhanov from Yalkhoy-Mokhk.
We left Alkhan-Kala in the morning. When they passed the bus stop, they were overtaken by a car, Qureish slowed down, and then they opened fire from firearms. Everyone who was in the car was wounded, Viktor Alekseevich especially seriously. Qureish, despite the pain, drove the car. Rosa pinched the carotid artery on the neck of Viktor Alekseevich. They were stopped at the post at the exit from the village and checked their documents for about forty minutes. Perhaps it was these moments that decided the outcome of the case. Then the doctors said that Viktor Alekseevich could have been saved if he had received help on time.

After being wounded, Viktor Alekseevich and Roza Muzaeva were taken to the 9th hospital. There, Viktor Alekseevich underwent an operation. The next day it was decided to transport him to Vladikavkaz.

Tatyana Ivanovna Kasatkina, executive director of HRC "Memorial" arrived. We went to negotiate at the Center for Disaster Medicine. The head of the Center said that they have cars, but all patients are transported only at the expense of relatives. Allegedly, they are not given money either for gasoline, or for spare parts, or for salaries. Transportation of the wounded, accompanied by a doctor, cost, according to him, 3,000 rubles. We gave this money, and then I had to take the receipt. When I came for her, I saw a luxurious table, very rare for 2001 in Grozny. I apologized, thinking they were celebrating some big event, but I was reassured that it was "just lunch" and offered to join in while the receipt was being written. I felt surreal...

After some time, I went to city hospital No. 9. They didn’t let me see Viktor Alekseevich, he was in intensive care, I went to Rosa. Looking into the ward, I saw that the investigator was interrogating her. It was Mikhail Zhukov from the prosecutor's office of the Grozny region. Then he “lost” this protocol of interrogation, the case was forgotten, we did not succeed in investigating the murder.”

***

At about 1 p.m. (according to other sources, at 10 a.m.) in the Zavodskoy district of Grozny, near the checkpoint "Shanghai" (such an inscription was on the concrete blocks enclosing it), employees of Russian law enforcement agencies arrived in two UAZ-469 and UAZ-452 vehicles ( the so-called tablet), as well as a gray GAZ-21029 (Volga), stopped the Niva with registration number ... 065 AO 05 / rus.
They dropped off and took away in an unknown direction the driver and three passengers: Ali Magomedovich Tasuev, born in 1975, from the village of Oktyabrskoye (1st Dairy State Farm) of the Grozny District. (owner of Niva), a native of the city of Urus-Martan (lived in house 48 on Novaya St.), and Said-Khusein Yunadievich Elgakaev, born in 1977. The place of residence of two other detainees, Viskhan Sultanovich (Makhmudovich) Makhmudov, born in 1980, and Dzhambulat Idrisovich Baudinov, born in 1976 (1980), is unknown at the Memorial HRC.
Searches organized by relatives did not yield any results. We only managed to find out that the abductors were wearing masks and they arrived at the mentioned post accompanied by two armored personnel carriers. However, they did not manage to find out on fresh tracks where the detainees were taken and where the car taken from them was driven away. For twenty days nothing was known about the fate of these people.
On June 21 or 22, one of the TV programs of Russian television showed the corpse of a militant dressed in military uniform, next to which lay a walkie-talkie and a machine gun. It followed from the plot that the victim was allegedly a native of the city of Gudermes. Relatives thought it was Dzhambulat Baudinov. However, all attempts to find out who filmed the story, where the corpse shown in it is located and what happened to the rest of the people, namely Viskhan Makhmudov, Ali Tasuev and Said-Khussein Elgakaev, were unsuccessful. The situation was not clarified either by the investigation initiated by the prosecutor's office of Grozny in the framework of criminal case No. 13097, initiated on July 4 of the same year on the fact of the abduction of four people (Article 126 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). By early 2004, they were still considered missing.
 
   ***
Near the district center of Nozhai-Yurt, unidentified people fired at the Kazbek checkpoint, where officers of the Nozhai-Yurt District VOVD, seconded from various regions of the Russian Federation, were on duty.

Employees of the Russian law enforcement agencies detained Magomed Vakhitovich Aziev, born in 1982, in Shali. Nothing is known about the further fate of this person of the HRC "Memorial".

From the book "People Live Here", Usam Baisaev, Dmitry Grushkin, 2006

In the photo - Viktor Popkov