After a month-long текнологический перерыв, Biznesslanch is back. To anyone bored enough to be waiting for a new post here over the winter holidays, I apologize; holidays and starting a new job apparently aren’t conducive to writing a blog.

A shootout outside an army base in Chechnya last Sunday got whole lot more interesting last week when one of the people wounded turned out to be a Chechen policeman currently wanted by Austrian prosecutors for murder. That would be the murder of Umar Israilov, a former Ramzan Kadyrov bodyguard who was giving up all kinds of dirt on his old boss to NY Times journos and the European Court of Human Rights, in broad daylight in Vienna in January 2009.

Investigators are trying to figure out how Lecha Bogatyrev, the man wanted in Austria, managed to find himself of the middle of what was apparently a fairly sophisticated ambush targeting 35-year old Lt. Colonel Bislan Elimkhanov, a former commander of the ‘Zapad’ (West) battalion made up of Chechens fighting against separatists under the auspices of the GRU (Russian military intelligence).

The details of that ambush near Khankala, a suburb of Grozny, in which three people were killed, have trickled out slowly; the news that Elimkhanov was involved came out a day after the event and Bogatyrev’s wounding a week after that. Details are still murky, as is most of the back story involving Bogatyrev  and Israilov (I don’t want to get too deep into the details as it’s not the main point here), but the incident has various sources speculating that a war between security forces in Chechnya may be brewing.

The Ambush

The actual attack on the three car convoy in which Elikmkhanov and his men were traveling seems to have been fairly complex. According to Elimkhanov’s interview in Kommersant, the convoy was around 20 meters away outside a military checkpoint leading into the Khankala base when it had to slow down for a torn-up patch of road. As the cars slowed, they were hit by a hail of gunfire from at least two sides, including fire from automatic weapons and sniper rifles.

Elimkhanov (photo courtesy of Kommersant)

Elimkhanov’s driver Adam Isayev was killed and Elimkhanov was struck several times, including in the stomach, arm and leg. Elimkhanov’s soldiers in the convoy returned fire at a car wash where the sniper fire allegedly originated, and a Lada parked on the side of the road, both around 150 meters from the gate. In the resulting firefight, one of the apparent shooters – Ruslan Tatabayev, wanted for fatally stabbing a man in a bar outside Moscow in 2008 – was killed as was another person, described as a local resident. Six servicemen (including Elimkhanov), at least two other men not in Elimkhanov’s convoy and Bogatyrev were wounded.

There doesn’t seem to much doubt on the part of people involved and investigators that the ambush was not a random attack by separatist militants. “I doubt that the militants have the ability to organize this kind of attack, much less in a part of Grozny close to a heavily guarded military base,” a source told the website Caucasian Knot, adding that it was his belief that the attack was personally directed at Elimkhanov. Other comments made by sources in the security services to various other media outlets have echoed this suspicion.

Any theory that it was a random attack was further eroded when Elimkhanov revealed that the convoy had been stopped 5 or 6 kilometers from the base for a document check by security service members in black uniforms at a GAI (road inspectorate) checkpoint. Elimkhanov told Kommersant in an interview from the hospital that one of the men who looked over his documents was none other than Tatabayev. Tatabayev, according to a Moskovsky Komsomolets article, was often seen with Chechen police officers despite being wanted on federal murder warrant. The same article also cited ‘unofficial information’ that three attackers, not one, were killed when Elimkhanov’s men returned fired, a claim I couldn’t find echoed in other sources.

Consequences and Theories

The dominant theory among Russian media sources following the story is that the ambush was sprung on Elimkhanov in revenge for an incident in November 2010 in which some of his men got into a fight with local police that resulted in a road police lieutenant, Gelani Akhmedov, being killed. Local security services accused Aslan Magomadov, a member of Elimkhanov’s company better known by his radio call-sign ‘Tyson’, of pulling the trigger. Military investigators, however, said they weren’t able to establish whether Tyson really did kill Akhmedov or whether one of Akhmedov’s comrades accidentally shot him in the chaos of the fight.

In any event, local security forces effectively blockaded Elimkhanov and his men in their base and demanded that he hand over Tyson. Elimkhanov refused and, according to a Rosbalt article, the situation was teetering on the edge of breaking out into another gun battle until higher-ups in Moscow intervened. (read more about the incident here 1 2 3)

With this information in hand, everything seems to fit into a coherent theory. According to this theory, the stop at the GAI post was set up in order to determine which car Elimkhanov was sitting in. An unnamed soldier in the convoy quoted in the Moskovsky Komsomolets article said that as the cars were pulling away from the checkpoint, another car sped past them, with the implication being that it contained Tatabayev and whoever else participated in the attack. The professionalism of the attack also suggests that the people responsible knew exactly what they were doing.

It also accounts for motive. To be fair, there are any number of separatist groups that would not need an excuse to shoot up a special forces convoy, but the fact that the attackers targeted Elimkhanov specifically seems to point to a dispute of a more personal nature. Chechen security services furious over Elimkhanov’s protection of Tyson fit the bill nicely as the avengers in the standard tit-for-tat killing narrative. That the now-defunct GRU ‘Zapad’ and ‘Vostok’ battalions – Vostok, in particular – had a long history of bad blood with the local security forces under Kadyrov’s control just lends more support to this idea.

Bogatyrev - on the far left - apparently showed up during a Vesti news report in November, almost 2 years after fleeing Austria

The question of Bogatyrev’s presence raises another possibility that can be built into this basic theory. Bogatyrev has claimed that he just happened to be on the scene by chance, but the serviceman quoted in the Moscow Komsomolets article placed Bogatyrev in one of the cars at the GAI checkpoint and it’s a suspiciously large coincidence that Bogatyrev – himself a local security service member – simply chanced to be at an ambush sprung by local police officers.

If Austrian prosecutors are to be believed, Bogatyrev had already participated in one hit on a Kadyrov enemy organized by one of Kadyrov’s advisers, Shaa Turlayev. According to Rosbalt, Kadyrov, discussing the Akhemdov slaying and Tyson’s involvement, said in December, “If today the investigative committee, the military prosecutors, the command staff don’t deliver him [Tyson], then we’ll find a punishment.” These two facts could point to Kadyrov’s involvement, as speculated by Liz Fuller at RFE/RL’s Caucasus Report.

Fuller goes further, saying that the attack could have been intended to take out Bogatyrev – who would be killed in the return fire, thus negating any pressure from Austria – and Elimkhanov. This is a little much, as Bogatyrev seems to have been protected by someone in the almost two years he had been back in Chechnya and there would have been ample opportunities to silence him in a much less public way. Moreover, Kadyrov’s involvement, while plausible due to the record of people who fall foul of him ending up dead in very public killings, isn’t necessary to developing a credible theory of the attack; it just adds more intrigue. I have no problem believing that the attack could have occurred without Kadyrov or his immediate circle knowing about it, although if it came out that Kadyrov was, in fact, involved, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Whatever the case, the case shows at the very least that Kadyrov’s hold on power isn’t as ironclad as some would have people believe. That there can be ambushes laid by police on military formations under his watch demonstrates that there are still fractures within the security apparatus in Chechnya, particularly between local and federal forces. According to the worst case scenario, as floated by the Rosbalt piece, the incident could even trigger a war between local, Kadyrov-controlled forces and forces under federal control. Whatever the case, the situation is Chechnya is still extremely delicate and looks to remain so.