Analysts treat authorities' version of shootout in Stary Achkhoi as unreliable

The armed incident in the village of Stary Achkhoi, where law enforcers shot three people dead who had allegedly attacked them, could have been staged both by Chechen authorities in order to send fewer fighters to Ukraine, and by Chechen law enforcers to improve performance indicators, and then they gave it a new perspective, analysts have suggested.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on February 14, in Stary Achkhoi, Achkhoi-Martan District of Chechnya, three men shelled policemen and were killed by return fire. Ramzan Kadyrov said that two members of some grouping that was planning attacks on law enforcers had been detained. However, Chechen activists assert that the shootout version raises doubts.

The incident could have been staged in order to reduce the number of law enforcers sent from Chechnya to Ukraine, said a former employee of the local prosecutor's office. "They pretend that there is tension in Chechnya," he has added.

"Kadyrov is doing everything possible to send fewer of his law enforcers to Ukraine. Because casualties come back; and people's unrests are not in his favour," the source has explained.

Now, there is no bandit underground in Chechnya, he has added. "Everyone knows what this means for relatives in Chechnya," an analyst has noted.

The point is in a shootout among law enforcers, or in a provocation, Khusein Iskhanov, the head of the "Ichkeria"* cultural association in Austria and a former member of Ichkeria's* operative management, believes, adding that there is no active armed underground in Chechnya. "There are no such madmen who would be planning to start an uprising today," he has emphasized.

*The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is an unrecognized separatist state formation existing in 1991-2000, created after the collapse of the Soviet Union on part of the territory of the former Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and liquidated by the Russian army during the second Chechen military campaign. Ichkeria was not recognized by any of the UN member states.