Militants, Law Officers Killed in Dagestan
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Scandal-Tainted Governor Is Removed by Medvedev
10 September 2010
By Alexandra Odynova
President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Novosibirsk Governor Viktor Tolokonsky as his new envoy to the Siberian Federal District on Thursday, a reshuffle that rids Novosibirsk of a corruption-tainted leader weeks before key elections.
Tolokonsky will replace Anatoly Kvashnin, a former chief of the General Staff who has held the envoy post since 2004, the Kremlin said.
Tolokonsky will be succeeded by Deputy Governor Vasily Yurchenko, whose popularity United Russia is banking on to attract votes in October elections by placing him at the top of its list of candidates running for the regional legislature, even though Yurchenko is not expected to take a seat.
United Russia snubbed Tolokonsky, a party member for five years, in favor of Yurchenko, 50, who just joined the party last year, when it drew up its party list in August.
Tolokonsky's reputation took a beating this year after two officials close to him were detained in February on suspicion of having links to a local gang blamed for a series of crimes over the past 20 years.
Tolokonsky personally vouched for the two officials, Novosibirsk Deputy Mayor Alexander Solodkin and his father, Alexander Solodkin, who serves as Tolokonsky's aide on sports issues, but investigators still refused to release the men from custody.
Analysts said Thursday's reshuffle gave the authorities an easy way to remove Tolokonsky gracefully.
"It looks like an honorable resignation for Tolokonsky," said Mikhail Vinogradov, an analyst with the Petersburg Politics Fund.
Kvashnin's ouster had been expected because he was one of the least active envoys in the country, Vinogradov said, adding that he had thought Medvedev would replace him with former Chuvashia leader Nikolai Fyodorov, who was dismissed in July after heading the region for 16 years and still has not been appointed to a new position.
"Fyodorov could have given momentum to the [Siberian Federal] District," Vinogradov said. "The appointment just proves that the institute of envoys in Russia is suffering a period of decay."
Kvashnin, 64, who served as head of the General Staff and a deputy defense minister for seven years, fell seriously ill last year and considered resigning to undergo treatment, news reports said at the time.
Kvashnin will be appointed to a new position, the Kremlin said in the statement. It did not elaborate.
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Tolokonsky, 53, has governed the Novosibirsk region since 2000. Before that he served as Novosibirsk's mayor for seven years. His current five-year term was to expire in 2012 after he was reappointed as governor by then-President Vladimir Putin in 2007.
Tolokonsky is to step into his new office as presidential envoy on Monday.
The reshuffle is not the first time that Medvedev has moved governors to envoy offices. Last year, Khabarovsk Governor Viktor Ishayev became the first person appointed as presidential envoy to a federal district after serving as governor. Earlier this year, Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Khloponin became the presidential envoy to the newly created North Caucasus Federal District.
Vladikavkaz Blast Kills at Least 16
10 September 2010
By Nikolaus von Twickel
Kazbeg Basayev / Reuters
A The North Caucasus was rocked by its worst terror attack in months Thursday when a suicide attacker triggered a powerful car bomb outside a market in Vladikavkaz, killing at least 16 people and injuring 138.
The attack, which was immediately blamed on Islamist militants, coincided with a spate of suspected terrorist activity as Muslims marked the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Authorities in Dagestan said they uncovered an improvised bomb laboratory in a hotel and an undetonated bomb at a hydroelectric station.
The bomb in Vladikavkaz blew up at about 11:30 a.m. when a Volga car parked outside one of the city's main markets exploded. The car was parked close to the market's entrance, where unemployed men gather to be hired for day labor.
Among the dead was an 18-month-old child, who was badly injured in the blast and died hours later in the hospital, Interfax reported. Another seven children suffered non-life-threatening injuries, the report said.
In all, 138 people were injured in the explosion, 110 of them were hospitalized, RIA-Novosti reported.
Television footage from the scene showed a street splattered with blood and rescue workers carrying away maimed bodies.
Only the engine and front wheels remained of the exploded Volga. The bomb contained an equivalent of 40 kilograms of dynamite, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
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The suicide bomber was believed to have been sitting in the back seat when the explosion happened, Interfax reported, citing officials in the regional Interior Ministry.
Reports that two suicide bombers were in the car remained unconfirmed, but they were echoed by North Ossetian leader Taimuraz Mamsurov, who said the Volga was moving when it blew up. "The car was not standing still. It was driving in traffic," he said, Interfax reported.
Investigators said they believed that the car was driven into North Ossetia from neighboring Ingushetia about 90 minutes before the blast. The driver identified himself at a police checkpoint by the last name of Archakov, Interfax reported, citing an unidentified law enforcement source. The source said the driver's identification papers might have been forged.
But RIA-Novosti, also citing a law enforcement source, said the driver had been identified by the last name of Archiyev.
Both officials said the car was registered in Ingushetia and the owner had been identified as a certain Dobriyev, who told investigators that he had sold the car to an unknown man.
Local law enforcement agencies were put on high alert, and Vladikavkaz's schools and kindergartens were closed.
Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov said all markets in Ingushetia were also closed.
Yevkurov said Ingush people were also a target of the attack because many would buy food in Vladikavkaz for the end of Ramadan fasting. North Ossetia saw vicious ethnic conflict in its Ingush-populated eastern districts in the early 1990s.
President Dmitry Medvedev called the attackers "scum" and promised to capture them.
The Federal Security Service has detained three suspects, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov said, RIA-Novosti reported.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who celebrated the Muslim holiday Eid ul-Fitr by meeting Russia's chief mufti, urged the country's Muslim community to join in the fight against terrorism.
Bombers have struck at Vladikavkaz markets in the past. The deadliest instance was in 1999, when a powerful bomb at the same market killed 52 people and injured about 200.
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More explosions occurred in 2000, 2001 and 2002, with a combined death toll of 19.
In 2008, 12 people were killed when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a shuttle taxi near a market in the city.
North Ossetia also witnessed the 2004 Beslan hostage tragedy, which killed about 330 people, and a deadly attack on the garrison town of Mozdok in 2003, which killed 20.
Analysts said North Ossetia and its capital were Islamist targets because of the role of the predominantly Christian Ossetians in Russia's conquest of the Caucasus. Vladikavkaz, which means "ruler of the Caucasus," has been the major foothold in the region since being founded as a fortress in 1784.
"Sadly it is only logical for them to strike here," said Andrei Soldatov, a security analyst with Agentura.ru, a think tank.
Fear of attacks also gripped Georgia. A panic broke out in the biggest market in the capital, Tbilisi, after rumors spread on Thursday afternoon that a bomb had been placed there. Crowds toppled stalls as they tried to get out of the Lilo market, Interfax reported. Police said later that a thorough search had failed to turn up any explosives.
Meanwhile, reports from Dagestan suggested that Islamists there had for the first time conducted a major attack on sensitive local infrastructure.
RusHydro said Thursday that a bomb was discovered in the Irganai plant, located in the mountains west of the regional capital, Makhachkala.
The explosives, hidden in water bottles placed next to a cell-phone detonator and equivalent to three kilograms of dynamite, were found by workers cleaning up after a fire.
The flames early Wednesday destroyed much of the plant, but RusHydro maintained Thursday that they had been caused by a combustion of lubricating grease.
Islamist rebels claimed that they carried out a bomb attack on the 400-megawatt plant. A statement on the rebel Kavkaz Center web site said militants had placed three bombs, two of which went off.
A staff member from the power station disappeared 90 minutes before the fire, and a search is under way, Interfax reported.
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The power station also made headlines recently when its chief engineer was mysteriously abducted in July. Vladimir Redkin, who has worked in Dagestan's hydropower sector for more than 30 years, was freed last Friday, RusHydro said on its local web site, without elaborating.
Security in the North Caucasus' hydropower plants has been a major concern for Moscow. In July, attackers entered the Baksan hydropower station in Kabardino-Balkaria, killed two guards and planted bombs that destroyed two of the station's three generators.
After the attack, Medvedev promised to fire officials in law enforcement agencies and state companies if an attack like the one on Baksan occurred again.
Also Thursday, police in Makhachkala discovered a makeshift bomb laboratory in a hotel room after an explosion shook the room and three masked men fled into the hotel lobby, shooting a staff member and a guest before vanishing in the darkness, the official Riadagestan.ru news web site reported.
The two victims were hospitalized, the report said.
Police then discovered and defused two bombs in the room, each containing an equivalent of 1.5 kilograms of dynamite, as well as bomb-making material, handguns and a grenade.
Police uncovered a similar laboratory in a house in a Makhachkala suburb on Sept. 5, the report said.
NBA Opens Moscow Office to Grow Brand
The National Basketball Association opened an office in Moscow to get closer to the growing number of fans in Russia and Eastern Europe, NBA chief operational director Adam Silver said Thursday.
“This is a great time for the NBA to expand its presence in Russia, especially given Mikhail Prokhorov's commitment to further grow the sport in the country,” Silver said in a statement.
Prokhorov, a basketball enthusiast, finalized a deal to purchase the NBA's New Jersey Nets earlier this year and he also sponsors several college teams.
“I look forward to working together with the NBA and am ready to create more opportunities for boys and girls and students throughout Russia to become active basketball participants,” Prokhorov said in the same statement.
The billionaire earlier said he purchased the Nets to borrow NBA technology for making money in professional basketball, to turn the game into a sustainable business that doesn't have to rely exclusively on the support of the authorities or wealthy businessmen.
The NBA appointed Yegor Borisov as vice president for Russia and Eastern Europe. He most recently worked as Russia and the former Soviet Union chief for NBC Universal, one of the world's largest media companies.
“I … look forward to representing such an iconic brand as we grow the game both on and off the court,” Borisov said in the statement.
The Moscow office is the NBA's 16th worldwide. The league includes 30 U.S. and Canadian teams with players from 35 countries.
Militants, Law Officers Killed in Dagestan
11 September 2010
Associated Press
VLADIKAVKAZ ― Clashes between police and alleged militants left 10 more people dead Friday in the volatile North Caucasus, even as stunned residents laid flowers in a square where a suicide car bombing killed at least 16 people and wounded at least 138 the day before.
Thursday's bombing near the central market in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, was one of the deadliest attacks in Russia since the March subway bombings in Moscow that killed 40 people.
The North Caucasus has been gripped by violence stemming from two separatist wars in Chechnya and militant activity in other republics, as well as fueled by poverty, corruption and alleged extrajudicial killings and torture by law enforcement.
In Dagestan, the Interior Ministry said police killed four suspected militants holed up in a house in the village of Makhargi on Friday. Three police officers were killed in hours-long battle.
Police also killed a suspected militant during a raid on a house in Derbent, near the border with Azerbaijan, said Magomed Tagirov, a spokesman for the regional branch of the Interior Ministry.
A Dagestani policeman and a prison warden were shot to death in separate attacks, ministry officials said Friday.
The Vladikavkaz market was cordoned off Friday, and investigators combed the site for clues about the bombing. Flags flew at half-staff throughout the city.
A North Ossetian health official said 107 of the wounded were in local hospitals and 11 severely injured victims had been flown to Moscow, Itar-Tass reported.
President Dmitry Medvedev pledged to track down the perpetrators of the attack.
"The terrorists involved in such actions will be destroyed," he said at a separate economic forum in Yaroslavl, a city northeast of Moscow. "We are determined to fight the terrorism to the end."
Thursday's blast was so powerful that glass in nearby buildings shattered. The area was cleaned of blood and shredded clothing, but the twisted wrecks of several cars still littered the street.
A few blocks away, weeping relatives and neighbors mourned two bombing victims, 54-year-old Yaselin Mamedova and 18-month-old Elnur Ashinov. Their bodies were being prepared for burial later that day in accordance with Muslim practice.
There has been no public claim of responsibility for Thursday's attack, but suspicion fell on Islamist militants who launch frequent small attacks in neighboring North Caucasus republics, especially Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia.
While those three areas have a Muslim majority, North Ossetia is predominantly Orthodox Christian with a sizable Muslim minority.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with Russia's top Muslim cleric after the blast. Putin said the country's 20 million Muslims should play a key role in eradicating Islamist extremism in the nation.
"Crimes like the one that was committed in the North Caucasus today are aimed at sowing enmity between our citizens. We mustn't allow this," Putin said at the Thursday meeting.
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