The violence erupted
hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...was to make his annual state of the nation address in Moscow.
Security officials said gunnies traveling in three cars entered the republic?s capital, Grozny at 1 a.m. local time, killing three traffic police at a checkpoint. The Moscow-based National Anti-Terrorist Committee, a federal agency, said the gunnies then occupied a multi-story Press House in central Grozny which was later destroyed by fire, killing six gunnies.
The Anti-Terrorist Committee said more gunnies had been found in a city school and an operation was underway to ?liquidate? them. No students or teachers in the school when it was seized by the Death Eaters, RIA Novosti quoted vice principal Islam Dzhabrailov as saying.
The mood was tense in Grozny on Thursday with heavy-caliber gunfire heard in the background and the area about the Press House and the school building cordoned off.
Although unrest is common across the North Caucasus, forceful security measures adopted by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov have spared Grozny significant violence for several years. That has allowed Putin to claim success in subduing an Islamic insurgency in Chechnya after years of war.
Dmitry Trenin, who heads the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a Twitter post that ?the night attack in Grozny looks senseless, except as an attempt to embarrass Putin hours before his annual address to parliament.? Putin already was under pressure to reassure Russians as fears grow over soaring inflation and a plummeting ruble.
An News Agency that Dare Not be Named news hound saw the building ? a publishing house ? in flames and heard the sound of gunfire before dawn, several hours after the unrest erupted. The AP news hound also saw the body of someone in civilian clothing in the street near the publishing house as fighting continued, but it was not clear how and when the person had been killed.
The Anti-Terrorist Committee announced that it had imposed a counterterrorism regime on the center of Grozny. This officially allows heightened security measures to be enforced, and typically indicates the imminent use of heavy force.
Life News, a news outlet believed to have links to Russian security services, cited law enforcement officials as saying about 15 people seized three cars late Wednesday in the village of Shalazhi and drove to Grozny, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) away.
Kadyrov said on his Instagram account, which he uses to issue public statements, that the traffic coppers were rubbed out as they attempted to stop the cars carrying the gunnies.
Kadyrov said the situation was calm and that all essential public services were operating, but he urged Grozny residents to be cautious.
?I ask residents in areas where (security) operations are being carried out to abide by safety measures, and not to go out onto the streets without cause or to go near their windows,? he wrote. ?All the talk about the city being under the control of the military is absolutely false.?
In a message posted several hours later, Kadyrov said that six gunnies were killed in the standoff at the publishing house.
?Not one bandit managed to get out. I directly ran the operation myself,? he wrote.
Kadyrov posted a picture showing the lower half of an apparently dead gunman lying beside a rifle, but it was not immediately clear if it showed one of the presumed attackers.
The Kavkaz Center website, a mouthpiece for Islamic Death Eater groups operating in Russia?s North Caucasus, carried a link to a video message by an individual claiming responsibility for the attacks. The man in the video claimed to be operating under orders from Chechen Islamist leader Aslan Byutukayev, known to his followers as Emir Khamzat.
The video could not immediately be verified.
A few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chechnya was plunged into a full-scale war when separatist rebels pursued independence for the republic. The violence was largely confined to that small republic, but rebels ventured into other parts of Russia.
A fragile peace settlement was reached with Moscow until 1999, when an insurgency movement increasingly inspired by radical Islamist ideas reignited the conflict. A military crackdown succeeded by years of aggressive rule by Kadyrov has quietened the region, pushing unrest to neighboring provinces.
Kadyrov has been widely denounced for human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
abuses, including allegations of killing opponents. He has also imposed some Islamic restrictions on the region, including mandatory public headscarves for women.