RUSSIAN SERVICEMEN ATTACKED ON EVE OF DAGESTAN’S ELECTIONS.

A truck containing an eleven-man OMON [Special Purpose Militia] detachment from Lipetsk hit a mine in Dagestan’s Kizlyar district. One serviceman was killed and two others were wounded. The previous evening, there was another raid on Russian servicemen. Unknown gunmen opened fire on the living quarters of a helicopter detachment of the Special Caucasus Border District. One soldier was slightly wounded. Since the gunmen were aiming directly at the house of the deputy commander of the Special Caucasus Border District, Major General Sergei Bondarev, they are believed to have been trying to kill him. (NTV, June 22)

According to one version, this raid was made by the same group that blew up the border guard apartment building in Kaspiisk on November 16, 1996, when more than sixty people died. Although the culprits have not been captured, investigators think that the Kaspiisk bombing was the work of the so-called “sturgeon Mafia,” whose efforts at illegally catching and smuggling these fish were disrupted by the border guards. (NTV, June 22)

But it is more likely that the attack on the Russian servicemen was intended to destabilize the situation on the eve of the elections for Dagestan’s State Council, scheduled to take place on June 26. As the Monitor has already reported, the Kremlin’s decision to send an additional contingent of internal troops to Dagestan to maintain order during the elections could both strengthen anti-Russian sentiments in the republic and lead to new armed attacks on Russian servicemen. (See the Monitor, June 22)

INTERNATIONAL CIRCASSIAN ASSOCIATION ASKS PRIMAKOV TO HELP BROTHERS IN KOSOVO.