Attack on Grozny indicates capabilities of Chechen militants, experts say

The attack on Grozny could be the implementation of the threats announced by the leaders of the "Islamic State" (IS) to the leadership of Chechnya, said Alexei Malashenko, a political analyst and a member of the Scientific Council of the Moscow Carnegie Centre.

In his turn, Akhmet Yarlykapov, a senior scientific collaborator at the Centre for Ethno-Political Studies of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is confident that the attack on Grozny was committed by members of the local underground and has no relation to the activities of the IS. The events in Grozny indicate the battle-capable nature of the Chechen underground, said the journalist Orhan Cemal.

What happened in Grozny is a military operation, similar to what happened in Nalchik in 2005, said Alexei Malashenko.

Akhmet Yarlykapov does not exclude the association with the date of Russia's President's address to the Russian Federal Assembly. He added that Chechnya could now intensify repressions against supporters of the Salafi branch of Islam.

Let us note here that the fight in Chechnya has become the third major militants' action since the beginning of 2014.

Over the past few years, the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has been estimating the power of militants in Chechnya as 40-50 persons. In May 2013, he said that militants remain only on the border with Ingushetia.

According to estimates of the "Caucasian Knot", based on information from open sources, since the start of January until the end of November this year, a total of 290 people perished and 144 were wounded in the armed conflict in Northern Caucasus; among them 24 persons were killed and 27 were wounded in Chechnya.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.