.Kremlin-backed President of Ingushetia wounded by bomb
The Kremlin-backed president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, has been seriously wounded by a roadside bomb, sparking fears of a Chechnya-style war in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region.
The assassination attempt on Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, seen as a moderating influence in the most unstable of the Russian Caucasian republics, left him fighting for his life.
He was admitted to hospital in critical condition, while at least four of his bodyguards were killed.
Although reports from Ingushetia were contradictory, the president's prognosis seemed grim. Doctors at the hospital where Mr Yevkurov was being treated said he was on life-support in intensive care. But a presidential spokesman said that Mr Yevkurov's life was "not yet" in danger.
Observers said that the assassination attempt was likely to trigger a swift and possibly brutal Kremlin response against Ingushetia's insurgents.
"We should expect a major security offensive in Ingushetia," said a respected human rights activist with years of experience in the North Caucasus.
Ingushetia, one of several quasi-autonomous republics in the North Caucasus, has gradually taken over from neighbouring Chechnya as the region's most dangerous province.
While Chechnya has been largely subdued after an often brutal decade long war, the rebellion that begun there has spread elsewhere into the North Caucasus.
Ingushetia's increasingly powerful insurgency, a loose coalition of separatists and militant Islamists, has grown more daring since 2007.
While summer traditionally sees a surge in rebel attacks, the violence has been relentless in the past month, with attacks reported on an almost daily basis.
The insurgents claimed a high profile victim on June 10th, when the deputy head of the Ingush supreme court was killed as she dropped her children off at school.
Causing even more alarm in the Kremlin, the powerful interior minister of Dagestan, a violence-plagued republic on Chechnya's southern flank, was shot dead by a sniper during a wedding five days later.
Fearing that the violence was spreading, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, made an unscheduled visit to Dagestan in an attempt to shore up the Kremlin's waning authority in the region.
The attack on Mr Yevkurov represents the most avert challenge for Moscow yet.
While it was swiftly condemned by Mr Medvedev as an "act of terror", analysts have long predicted increasingly volatility in the region after Russia's recognition last year of the two breakway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
At the heart of last year's war with Georgia, both republics lie just across the border from the North Caucasus. But while Russia supported the rebel administrations of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as part of a strategy of weakening Georgia, any hint of separatism on the Russian side of the border was crushed.
The Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, has been accused of committing widespread human rights abuses, from torture to extra-judicial executions. Disappearances in Ingushetia and elsewhere have remained common.
Worried that popular sentiment in Ingushetia was turning against Moscow, President Medvedev appointed Mr Yevkurov to run the republic last October.
But his campaign to improve the human rights situation in Ingushetia reaped only modest dividends in the face of strong opposition from the powerful FSB. He also alienated the hardline faction of his government by pushing for reconciliation in a land dispute with the neighbouring Christian republic of North Ossetia, which, unlike South Ossetia, lies in Russian territory.
The attack on My Yevkurov is only likely to increase those divisions, stoking further instability in a republic that some analysts believe has the capacity to drag Russia into a major internal war once again.
Telegraph
The assassination attempt on Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, seen as a moderating influence in the most unstable of the Russian Caucasian republics, left him fighting for his life.
He was admitted to hospital in critical condition, while at least four of his bodyguards were killed.
Although reports from Ingushetia were contradictory, the president's prognosis seemed grim. Doctors at the hospital where Mr Yevkurov was being treated said he was on life-support in intensive care. But a presidential spokesman said that Mr Yevkurov's life was "not yet" in danger.
Observers said that the assassination attempt was likely to trigger a swift and possibly brutal Kremlin response against Ingushetia's insurgents.
"We should expect a major security offensive in Ingushetia," said a respected human rights activist with years of experience in the North Caucasus.
Ingushetia, one of several quasi-autonomous republics in the North Caucasus, has gradually taken over from neighbouring Chechnya as the region's most dangerous province.
While Chechnya has been largely subdued after an often brutal decade long war, the rebellion that begun there has spread elsewhere into the North Caucasus.
Ingushetia's increasingly powerful insurgency, a loose coalition of separatists and militant Islamists, has grown more daring since 2007.
While summer traditionally sees a surge in rebel attacks, the violence has been relentless in the past month, with attacks reported on an almost daily basis.
The insurgents claimed a high profile victim on June 10th, when the deputy head of the Ingush supreme court was killed as she dropped her children off at school.
Causing even more alarm in the Kremlin, the powerful interior minister of Dagestan, a violence-plagued republic on Chechnya's southern flank, was shot dead by a sniper during a wedding five days later.
Fearing that the violence was spreading, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, made an unscheduled visit to Dagestan in an attempt to shore up the Kremlin's waning authority in the region.
The attack on Mr Yevkurov represents the most avert challenge for Moscow yet.
While it was swiftly condemned by Mr Medvedev as an "act of terror", analysts have long predicted increasingly volatility in the region after Russia's recognition last year of the two breakway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
At the heart of last year's war with Georgia, both republics lie just across the border from the North Caucasus. But while Russia supported the rebel administrations of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as part of a strategy of weakening Georgia, any hint of separatism on the Russian side of the border was crushed.
The Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, has been accused of committing widespread human rights abuses, from torture to extra-judicial executions. Disappearances in Ingushetia and elsewhere have remained common.
Worried that popular sentiment in Ingushetia was turning against Moscow, President Medvedev appointed Mr Yevkurov to run the republic last October.
But his campaign to improve the human rights situation in Ingushetia reaped only modest dividends in the face of strong opposition from the powerful FSB. He also alienated the hardline faction of his government by pushing for reconciliation in a land dispute with the neighbouring Christian republic of North Ossetia, which, unlike South Ossetia, lies in Russian territory.
The attack on My Yevkurov is only likely to increase those divisions, stoking further instability in a republic that some analysts believe has the capacity to drag Russia into a major internal war once again.
Telegraph
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