It looks like old Yunusbek Yevkurov, friend of Putin, United Russia politician and President of Ingushetia, is playing silly buggers messing about with figures for how many rebels are still in Ingushetia and exactly how many are applying to various rehabilitation schemes. It's all very sketchy. Then again, this is if you believe the JamesTown Foundation, and we know where their bias lies - but I can't really find fault with what they're saying.
Yevkurov also said something rather unpleasant about the need to allow relatives of victims killed in attacks by militants to take "blood revenge". This is not good. I will provide a link to the article but I can't use the my usual methods of hiding with it, so it has to be raw.
=42694&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=b35963013dfd89cdfb4c425f49d9920e#.U9wrIWPndeB]http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=42694&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=b35963013dfd89cdfb4c425f49d9920e#.U9wrIWPndeBYevkurov emphasized that, within the limits of the law, the authorities intended to influence and punish the relatives of members of criminal groups if the latter commit new crimes. “Until now we have acted with a great restraint and have attempted to restrain the relatives of those who were killed by the militants from taking blood revenge, but we will no longer do that,” he said. “I have tasked the Security Council of Ingushetia to spread the information on and photographs of all the bandits and those they killed in the republic. Let everyone look and know” (newsru.com, May 29).
The head of the republic was essentially calling for blood revenge. This will cause a chain reaction in a society in which the pre-Islamic traditions of vengeance still run strong. By vilifying the relatives of the militants, Yevkurov is practically expanding the conflict in Ingushetia. The underground fighters in Ingushetia today are not like those in the republic at the start of the second Russian-Chechen war in 2000, when they would go underground to take revenge or escape the authorities. Today’s militant is an ideologically well-prepared young man who has consciously chosen to fight the government and cannot be stopped through threats made to his relatives.
Of course Putin is 100% ok with all of this.
In other Caucasian news:
According to the Chechen nationalists, a Chechen doctor living in Odessa seems to have joined up with the Ukrainian national guard, specifically Kiev 2 Battalion, and is now fighting as a sniper in Donetsk against the Russian rebels. Her name is
Amina Okueva. The Chechen nationalists are claiming she is known as the "Lioness of Ichkeria" but I don't think we can really verify that.