Moscow waged two wars against separatist rebels in mainly Musselmen Chechnya in the 1990s but the province has been fairly peaceful in recent years as Death Eaters have turned their focus to the nearby regions of Dagestan
...a formerly inoffensive Caucasus
republiccurrently bedevilled by low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism, primarily due to its proximity to Chechnya. There are several dozen ethnic groups, most of which speak either Caucasian, Turkic, or Iranian languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, and Laks. While Russers form less than five percent of the population, Russian remains the primary official language and the lingua franca...
and Ingushetia.
This month, President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...put Russia's security forces on high alert to safeguard the Games due to take place next year in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
A police front man said by telephone from the Chechen capital Grozny that a police patrol had run into a band of rebels in the southern Shatoi district.