But also:
Daily Beast:
Did ISIS Just Attack Inside Russia?
Hours before Russian President Putin’s annual address to the nation, the Chechen capital saw the worst combat in years.
Inevitably, some of this may have been exaggerated in social media. But there is no question that a new battle has begun in an old war that Moscow—and many in Grozny—had hoped was over. Analysts also are raising the possibility that the so-called Islamic State, widely known as ISIS or ISIL, may have, at a minimum, ideological links to the attackers.
The editor-in-chief of the Caucasian Knot Internet site, Gregory Shvedov, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that the assault on Grozny was one more episode in series of terrorist incidents in Chechnya this year: “The underground intends to demonstrate that the existing security system is not effective,” Shvedov said. “We reported a split in the ‘Caucasus Emirate’ with some insurgents joining ISIS.” But it is not clear if the latest action is at the hands of that faction or another. “There is still a question who really was behind the current attacks,” said Shvedov.
Early this morning, Moscow’s key leader in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, posted an Instagram photograph of a corpse. In the caption Kadyrov said that an anti-terror special operation was coming to the end and that six insurgents were killed at Dom Pechati, a government building in the city center: “Dogs die a dog’s death! Not a single bandit will be able to escape! I personally command this operation.” Kadyrov also asked locals not to leave their homes. Later in an Echo of Moscow interview Kadyrov said that the operation would be over in 20 minutes.“Dogs die a dog’s death! Not a single bandit will be able to escape!”
Hours passed, but the fighting continued. By noon, Russian officials reported four dead and dozens wounded. Dom Pechati looked burned out after the night of fighting. “I hear constant mortar, gun shots—this is the first such huge scale insurgency attack on Grozny since August 6, 1996,” Milana Mazayeva, on the scene, told The Daily Beast.
The attack came few hours before president Vladimir Putin was due to deliver his annual speech to the Federation Council, and the terrorists released their own video “Mujahideen address about the fighting in Jokhar” (the Islamist name for Chechnya). On it a young beardless man speaks Chechen and Arabic with a soft accent. He says that Amir Khamzat ordered “mujahideen of the Caucus Emirate ” to enter Grozny and that it was a “vendetta act” in response to non-believers humiliating Muslim women. Kadyrov had promised to detain Muslim women wearing veils that cover their faces.
“This is a shahid [martyrdom] operation and we are going to fight until we die,” the man in the video said. “We already have results: we destroyed many vehicles, military convoys, seized many trophies.”
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Yahoo:
Islamic militants attack Chechen capital; 20 dead
The insurgents in Chechnya and other Caucasus regions want to create an independent state governed by their strict interpretation of Islamic law. Some Caucasus militants have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join up with the Islamic State group. IS has vowed to launch attacks in Russia, but there have been no indications to date that it has followed through.
The fighting in Grozny began about 1 a.m., when roughly 10 gunmen riding in three cars fired on traffic police who had stopped them for a check, killing three officers. Some of the militants then holed up in a nearby office building and exchanged gunfire with police who quickly cordoned the area.
The battle left the 10-story Press House, which housed local media offices, gutted by a blazing fire that also spread to a nearby street market. Some gunmen fled to an empty school nearby. It took police more than 12 hours to kill 10 militants, according to Russian authorities, who also reported that 10 officers were killed and 28 wounded.
Russian state television showed video footage of police officers firing automatic weapons and grenade launchers at the three-story school, its windows left shattered and charred.
The gunbattles were still raging when Putin began delivering his address in an ornate Kremlin hall, and the Russian leader sought to cast the violence as a legacy of what he described as foreign support for Chechnya-based insurgents in the past.
"We remember high-level receptions for terrorists dubbed as fighters for freedom and democracy," he said.
While Putin stopped short of directly blaming the West, his statement clearly referred to Western criticism of heavy-handed Russian tactics during two separatist wars in the region.
Without naming any specific countries, Putin claimed that separatist rebels had received "information, political and financial support" and even assistance from unspecified foreign special services, adding that some foreign powers "would gladly let Russia follow the Yugoslav scenario of disintegration and dismemberment."
Putin has used such rhetoric more frequently since the Ukrainian crisis, which strained Russia-West ties to a degree unseen since the height of the Cold War.
In his hour-long speech before a fawning crowd of senior officials and lawmakers, Putin accused the West of provoking the Ukrainian crisis to contain and weaken Russia. He described the standoff as a battle for Russia's survival.
"If for some European countries national pride is a long-forgotten concept and sovereignty is too much of a luxury, true sovereignty for Russia is absolutely necessary for survival," he said.
Putin defended the annexation of Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea as a move to protect Russia's spiritual roots, noting that Prince Vladimir, who converted the Kievan Rus to Christianity, was baptized in Crimea. He argued that Crimea has "sacral importance for Russia, like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the followers of Islam and Judaism."
On a defiant note, Putin warned that Moscow will not stand down in an argument with the "hypocritical" West, which he said hurt itself with anti-Russian sanctions. "It's pointless to talk to Russia from a position of force," he said.
Shortly after his speech, he met with Chechnya's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to praise him for quickly defeating the attackers.
In a message Thursday on his Instagram account, which Kadyrov uses to issue public statements, he posted a picture showing the lower half of an apparently dead gunman lying beside a sniper rifle. It was not immediately clear, however, whether the image was indeed that of an attacker.
"Not one bandit managed to get out," Kadyrov boasted.
Kadyrov has used generous Kremlin subsidies to rebuild Chechnya after two separatist wars and has relied on his feared security force of former rebels like himself to stabilize the province. International human rights groups have accused the Chechen strongman of rampant abuses, including arbitrary arrest, torture and extrajudicial killings. Kadyrov also has imposed some Islamic restrictions on Chechnya, including mandatory headscarves for women in public.
Militant attacks in Chechnya have become rare, and Thursday's fighting marked the worst bloodshed since 2010, when a group of gunmen raided the provincial legislature in Grozny, killing seven people and wounding 17 others. In October, a suicide attack outside a Grozny concert hall killed five policemen and wounded 12 others as the city celebrated Kadyrov's birthday.
The insurgency in Chechnya began as a secular separatist movement amid the Soviet collapse, and in 1994 Russia sent its military to end the mutiny. Rebels fought the Russian force to a standstill, but a second war in 1999 erupted when rebels invaded a neighboring Russian province and Moscow sent the army back in.
A military crackdown succeeded by years of brutal rule by Kadyrov has quietened Chechnya, but an insurgency dominated by Muslim extremists has spread across neighboring provinces.
---------------------------BBC:
Russia Chechnya: Deadly rebel attack rocks Grozny
Rebel gunmen have shot their way into the heavily fortified Chechen capital, Grozny, in a night-time attack which left as many as 16 people dead.
Arriving at 01:00 (22:00 GMT Wednesday) in cars, they fired on a traffic police checkpoint before attacking a media building and a school.An Islamist group said it had launched a suicide attack to avenge attacks by security forces on Muslim women.
Chechnya's Moscow-backed president said the situation was under control.
Ramzan Kadyrov said none of the attackers had escaped.
The controversial Chechen strongman has suppressed rebel activity in Chechnya since Russia ousted the separatist government there at the beginning of the century.
A man looks up at the burnt publishing house in
Grozny The attack was a rare breach of the heavy security which surrounds Grozny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said from Moscow he was confident Chechen security forces could handle the militants by themselves.
This is the most serious violence in Grozny for some time and will be another worry for President Putin, amid a serious downturn in the Russian economy, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports from Moscow.
Mr Putin prides himself on bringing stability to Chechnya after two bloody, separatist wars there since the break-up of the Soviet Union, our correspondent adds.
In flames
Three traffic policemen were killed as they tried to stop the gunmen's cars, Mr Kadyrov said.
Nine militants died in the subsequent fighting, the Chechen leader said.
According to the Russian government, a further four people died and 21 were injured during the fighting.
Inhabitants of the city woke to the sight of smoke rising from the gutted shell of the publishing house, where both Chechen and federal Russian media had offices.
Covered stalls at a market were also burned in the fighting.
At daybreak smoke billowed from the multi-storey
building stormed by gunmen There were no reports of any children being inside the school when the rebels seized it.
Mobile phone videos posted during the night attested to the ferocity of the fighting.
An Associated Press reporter saw the publishing house in flames and heard the continuing sound of gunfire before dawn.
The same reporter also saw the body of someone in civilian clothing in the street near the building.
"Not one bandit managed to get out," Mr Kadyrov later announced. "I directly ran the operation myself."
In a grainy video posted on YouTube, a gunman said he and a group of others had attacked the city in a "revenge operation" to avenge Muslim women harassed by the security forces.
He said the attack had been carried out on the instructions of Chechen rebel figure Aslan Byutukayev, an associate of Doku Umarov, the rebel leader believed to have been killed earlier this year.
The attack on Grozny came hours before President Putin gave his annual state of the nation address at the Kremlin.
Dmitry Trenin, who heads the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a Twitter post that the night attack in Grozny looked "senseless except as an attempt to embarrass Putin hours before his annual address".
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Islamic Militants Wage Fierce Attack on Grozny, Chechnya’s Capital
GROZNY, Chechnya — A fierce gun battle between Islamist militants and government security forces paralyzed the center of the Chechen capital, Grozny, overnight Thursday, leaving at least 20 people dead and embarrassing President Vladimir V. Putin just hours before he delivered his state-of-the-nation speech in Moscow.
It was the most violent, brazen attack linked to militant activity in the region in months. As dawn broke, smoke was rising from several locations, residents said in telephone interviews. Kheda Saratova, a human-rights activist, said that gunfire continued through the morning.
There was some speculation among analysts and on social media that the assault was carried out by fighters linked to the Islamic State or other radical groups fighting in Syria. If so, it would be the first such attack inside Russia.
Chechen fighters in Syria have threatened to carry out attacks in response to Moscow’s unalloyed support for the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the Kremlin ally who runs Chechnya, sought to play down the violence, attending Mr. Putin’s speech in Moscow and claiming that the reconstruction of the damaged buildings had already begun.
50 miles
RUSSIA
Moscow
“When this all started,” Mr. Kadyrov told reporters at the Kremlin, “I flew home, organized a special operation, killed the devils, held a meeting, gathered the staff needed to restore the damaged building and made it back in time to listen to the address of our national leader.” He was seen during the speech checking his telephone intently.
Mr. Putin also made a passing reference to the attack, first suggesting that the West was behind the long history of terrorist insurgency in the restive Caucasus Mountains because it wanted to break up Russia, just as it had Yugoslavia.
“Now these ‘rebels’ showed themselves again in Chechnya,” Mr. Putin said. “I am sure the local guys, local law enforcement bodies, will cope with it properly. They are working now to liquidate a new terrorist raid.”
Mr. Putin cemented his popularity after first assuming power in 2000 by ending a protracted war in Chechnya. Mr. Kadyrov, while often accused of human rights violations, pushed the militants out of Chechnya itself into neighboring republics, where the level of attacks rose. Chechnya has remained relatively calm.
Both the attack and the brewing economic crisis seemed to raise simultaneous questions about the signature achievements of Mr. Putin’s presidency: ending the Chechen war and obtaining unprecedented prosperity for many Russians.
Most of the violence in the Caucasus goes unnoticed because it takes place outside major urban centers. But Caucasian Knot, an authoritative website that tracks events in the region, said that 290 people had been killed and 144 wounded in fighting scattered through the Caucasus this year through the end of November.
Thursday’s attack was the third major assault this year, it said, following a suicide bombing in Grozny on Oct. 5 that killed five people and the destruction of a government armored personnel carrier by a land mine in April in which four soldiers were killed and seven wounded.
On Thursday, militants traveling in three cars infiltrated the capital around 1 a.m., killing three traffic police officers at a checkpoint and then occupying the 10-story House of Publishing at the center of the city, according to a statement by the National Antiterrorist Committee. Six of the gunmen were killed by security officers inside the building, which was gutted by fire that spread to a nearby market, it said.
The rest of the attackers were found near the House of Publishing in School No. 20, where fighting continued into Thursday, the statement said. Neither teachers nor students were at the school when it was seized, according to Russian news reports.
Ten police officers and nine militants were killed, Russian and Chechen government officials said. Another 28 police officers were injured, Andrey Chatsky, a spokesman for the antiterrorist committee, said in a statement broadcast on Russian television that also confirmed the police death toll.
Law enforcement agents eliminated at least nine militants, Mr. Kadyrov said in a statement posted on his website, noting, “We have the corpses.” He said the antiterrorist operation was over. He did not mention civilian casualties, and the Interior Ministry for the Chechen Republic did not answer telephone calls on Thursday evening.
The Interfax news agency quoted Mr. Kadyrov as saying that civilian victims of the violence would be compensated. As the fighting continued early Thursday, he used social media accounts to advise downtown residents to remain at home and away from windows.
There was little news of the attack on Russian state television before Mr. Putin’s speech, but once he mentioned it the clashes received wider coverage. Video footage was shown of security officers blasting the three-story school with grenade launchers and automatic weapons fire.
Mr. Kadyrov suggested that the militants were connected to Doku Umarov, the longtime leader of the Chechen militants who was killed last year. Attacks the group threatened against the Sochi Olympics last February never materialized.
Islamic fighters in southern Russia are organized as the Caucasus Emirate, a religiously motivated and pan-Caucasian movement that evolved from the initial Chechen nationalist and secular struggle for independence in the 1990s. Thursday is close to the 20th anniversary of the start of the first Chechen war, on Dec. 11.
“This could be a symbolic attack to show they can still organize something significant,” said Varvara Pakhomenko, an independent analyst of the region, referring to the Islamic militants. “They need new supporters and new fighters.”
Dmitry Trenin, the head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in a Twitter post, “The night attack in Grozny looks senseless, except as an attempt to embarrass Putin hours before his annual address to parliament.” He and others speculated that it might be the handiwork of the Islamic State.
The new leader of the Caucasus Emirate, Aliaskhab Kebekov, has not publicly sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. Yet, many Muslims from Chechnya and Dagestan, another republic in southern Russia, have gone to Syria to join the fight against President Assad.
Videos and news reports that have emerged since August cite “Omar the Chechen,” the pseudonym for Tarkhan Batirashvili, a senior Islamic State commander from the Caucasus, as telling his father that Russia was the next target after Iraq.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll come home and show the Russians,’ ” Temur Batirashvili, the militant’s father, told Bloomberg News from his home in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, on the Chechen border. “I have many thousands following me now and I’ll get more. We’ll have our revenge against Russia.”
In one online video, an unidentified fighter sitting in a mud-spattered sedan says he would like to “convey a message to Putin.”
“These are the Russian planes that you sent to Bashar,” the man says, referring to President
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