In July 2021, six people were killed in armed conflict in Northern Caucasus

In July 2021, during the ongoing armed conflict in Northern Caucasus, six persons were killed; no information about any wounded ones was reported. These are the results of the calculations run by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own materials and information from open sources.

At night on July 3, the counter-terrorist operation (CTO) regime was introduced in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria; later it was also introduced in the city of Baksan. The Russian National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC) stated that five people were killed during the CTO and treated them as militants. At 1:15 p.m. Moscow time, the CTO mode was lifted. According to investigators, law enforcers blocked two armed groupings with a total of five people in Nalchik and the vicinity of the village of Baksanenok. "On law enforcers' demand to surrender, these persons opened fire on them from the firearms they had with them. The attackers were liquidated by law enforcers' return fire," the branch for Kabardino-Balkaria of Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) has informed in its statement.

According to Nadezhda Kevorkova, a journalist, all the five persons declared killed in the CTO had been kidnapped earlier.

On July 7, the republic's Muftiate called for an objective investigation of the circumstances of the Nalchik CTO. On July 23, activists of human rights organizations in Kabardino-Balkaria addressed Kazbek Kokov, the head of the region, asking him to help in investigating the circumstances of the death of Khasanbi Khupsirgenov.

The statistics cited cannot accurately reflect the number of victims. Not all the data gets into news bulletins. It is not always possible to check how true the statements of law enforcement bodies are; and new data on the events that happened during the reporting period sometimes become known after the publication of statistics on the "Caucasian Knot".

In the evening on July 9, in Grozny, at the entrance to the Visaitovsky District, a man armed with a knife attacked employees of the combined police detachment of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) in Chechnya, who were on duty at a stationary post. The policemen used their service weapons, the ICRF informed.

The attacker was wounded and taken to hospital, where he died. Investigators have identified the attacker, a resident of the city of Grozny, born in 1993. The policemen did not suffer.

This attack on policemen was the second armed incident in Chechnya since the start of 2021.

In July 2021, no victims or incidents of the armed conflict were registered in Dagestan, Ingushetia, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia-Alania and the Stavropol Territory.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on August 2, 2021 at 01:16 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.