The Chechen opposition movement NIYSO has been claiming since Monday that there have been large-scale raids across multiple cities in the republic and that police shot and killed one Chechen resident Turpal-Ali Mezhidov, who was allegedly resisting arrest, on Monday in Grozny. Sources for OC Media confirmed that large numbers of security personnel were present in Grozny but said they did not know if there was a reason for the increased presence, which isn’t abnormal in the republic.
An OC Media source in Chechnya’s law enforcement agencies said that most of the personnel were at their usual stations. RFE/RL has claimed there have been some raids and checks in Grozny, but not on the scale that NIYSO have reported.
NIYSO is a Chechen opposition movement, operating outside Russia that publishes reports of alleged human rights violations, abductions and security operations in Chechnya.
‘Maybe they are looking for someone, maybe someone has been killed. They are constantly arresting people; it’s nothing unusual. NIYSO has just made a mountain out of a molehill’, one source said.
According to sources for RFE/RL, security forces carried out checks in Grozny’s Akhmatovsky (formerly Leninsky) district on Tuesday. The sources linked the raids to rumours of a possible attack on the police. They said police patrols had been reinforced across the republic overnight.
Chechen authorities have not commented on any increased checks. OC Media’s sources weren’t aware of any particularly unusual activity.
On Tuesday, Zamid Chalaev, commander of the Akhmat Kadyrov special regiment of the Interior Ministry, posted several video messages to residents of Chechnya on Instagram. He urged them not to leave their homes at night or give lifts to people asking to be taken somewhere.
‘If we catch such a person, we will shoot him without trial. We will show no mercy’, Chalaev said.
Chalaev has not commented on the possibility of heightened security measures before this, but did post a Pirates of the Caribbean meme, mocking NIYSO on 22 October.
Rumours circulated online from Monday evening after NIYSO claimed that security forces were carrying out large-scale raids, involving helicopters, in Gudermes and Grozny. They claimed that they had sources confirming that they had been mobilised because of ‘30 mujahideen who are armed and ready to fight to the death’.
In Islam, the term ‘mujahideen’ refers to people engaged in armed struggle in the name of their faith. NIYSO also claimed that Turpal-Ali Mezhidov, a resident of the Chechen city of Gudermes, was killed on Monday during a shootout with police officers at the Chernorechye post in the suburbs of Grozny.
OC Media found using leaked databases that Mezhidov has been listed as a suspected extremist since 2018 and as a terrorism suspect since 2023. However, he was not included on the official list of terrorists and extremists maintained by Rosfinmonitoring (‘Federal Financial Monitoring Service’).