Shootout with law enforcers becomes second incident in Dagestan within seven weeks, two persons killed

Dagestani law enforcers killed local residents in a shootout for the second time since March 27, when a similar incident occurred in the Kaitag District.

Today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Dagestan reported that an 18-year-old native of the village of Novolakskoye and a 20-year-old native of Kaspiysk rendered resistance to the police during an attempt to detain them and were killed in a shootout. The police found two grenades, a pistol, and two knives among the suspects’ belongings. According to the law enforcement bodies, the young people planned to attack the police with the above weapons.

On May 11, the above-mentioned two men attacked a taxi driver near the village of Tsyisha in the Kulinsky District in order to seize his car. The FSB and the MIA came to the conclusion that the attackers were “supporters of the extremist trend in Islam.”

According to the calculations run by the “Caucasian Knot”, based on its own data and the information from open sources, the shootout became the second incident in Dagestan since March 27, 2023. On that day, the police arrived in the village of Djigiya in the Kaitag District, after learning that a 29-year-old local resident illegally kept firearms. At the entrance to his house, the suspect began to shoot at the police and fatally wounded a passer-by. The shooter was killed by return fire.

Let us remind you that in January 2019, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Dagestan announced the almost complete neutralization of the armed underground in the region.

Since mid-2018, the law enforcement bodies have been reporting that the armed underground in Dagestan was almost eliminated, but armed incidents in the republic still occur regularly. In October 2020, Professor Aleksei Malashenko said that members of the armed underground were able to deliberately stay in the shadows for a long time.

“They are able to become more active in case if there is some kind of instability in Russia,” Aleksei Malashenko emphasized.