National Guard Officer Shot Dead in Ingushetia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 28 – In yet another measure of how tense the situation remains in Ingushetia and how well-armed the population is, Mikhail Aliyev, a senior lieutenant in the National Guard was shot and killed in a village near Nazran last night when he had parked his car on the side of the road and begun to speak with a local girl.

            Russian media have already given extensive coverage to this event (zona.media/news/2020/07/28/ingushetia, ria.ru/20200728/1575072826.html, interfax.ru/russia/719347, t.me/ENews112/7389 and ren.tv/news/kriminal/729030-kadry-s-mesta-ubiistva-rosgvardeitsa-v-ingushetii).

            The perpetrator has not been apprehended, and no motive has yet been suggested. But it seems clear that this death will only heighten tensions between the siloviki and the Ingush people even if the reasons for the attack were not related to the demonstrations that have roiled that North Caucasus republic since September 2018.

            Another source of tension emerged today when Ingush government officials decided to delay by two weeks the reopening of public life after the pandemic because rates of infection, hospitalization and deaths remain far higher than they should be under Russian standards for reopening (fortanga.org/2020/07/v-ingushetii-sohranyaetsya-napryazhennost-po-koronavirusu/).

            According to official statistics, 3620 people in the republic have been identified as having come down with the coronavirus infection, and 73 have died, a figure that makes Ingushetia second only to hard-pressed but much larger Daghestan in terms of mortality from the disease in the North Caucasus.