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From the beginning of his election campaign to the very end of his presidency, Murat Zyazikov struggled to show the Ingushetian people its place.
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Oct. 31, 2008
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Medvedev Fires Ingushetian President
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev terminated the presidency of Ingushetian President Murat Zyazikov yesterday. Colonel of the paratrooper guards Yunus-Bek Evkurov has been named temporary acting head of the republic. Kommersant has learned that Zyazikov was asked to resign due to the Kremlin’s dissatisfaction with his performance.
The Kremlin press service reported yesterday in the late evening that President Dmitry Medvedev had dismissed head of Ingushetia Murat Zyazikov. The formal reason for his departure was Zyazikov’s resignation. Kommersant has learned, however, that Zyazikov was asked to resign, due to the numerous scandals he had been involved in and his inability to control the republic.

Zyazikov replaced Ruslan Aushev as president of Ingushetia after Aushev earned the Kremlin’s displeasure for his ties with the leaders of independent Ichkeria and support for Ichkerian President Aslan Maskhadov. In 2002, the candidacy of FSB Gen. Zyazikov (he had received the rank just before the beginning of the election campaign) was approved by then-president Vladimir Putin personally.

The first scandal Zyazikov was involved in took place during the election campaigning. The general lost the first round of elections in April 2002 to State Duma member Alikhan Amirkhanov, who had the support of Aushev’s people. After the second round, the opposition accused Zyazikov’s supporters of ballot stuffing to the tune of about 20,000 votes. Amirkhanov declared after his defeat that he had been repressed by Moscow and the presidential representative for the Southern Federal District, who was Viktor Kazantsev at the time.

That was not the last controversy Zyazikov found himself in.

Zyazikov’s behavior during the seizure by terrorists of the school in Beslan in September 2004 created a storm of criticism. He did not go to Beslan, even though the terrorists wanted to hold negotiations with him. Later, Zyazikov told Kommersant that his appearance would not have helped the hostages, but the terrorists would have had the chance to dispose of him. That did not add to Zyazikov’s reputation.

All the while Zyazikov was in office, Ingushetia had the reputation of a region in foment. Formally, the region looked manageable. There was record turnout at all federal elections. But the opposition never missed a chance to declare that the authorities falsified the vote in an effort to pull the wool over Moscow’s eyes. At the beginning of the year, opposition members presented the Russian presidential administration with statements from 80,000 citizens of Ingushetia saying that they did not vote in the December 2007 State Duma elections. There are somewhat over 100,000 voters in Ingushetia.

In the first year of Zyazikov’s presidency, the opposition began clamoring for the return of refugees from the Prigorodny District of North Ossetia to their homes. In 2007, on the anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the Ingush, the opposition held mass meetings that authorities had to disperse with force. Then a permanent organizational committee was formed for a national meeting of the Ingushetian people, which led to new clashes at public meetings this year. The office of the republican newspaper and a hotel were burned, after which dozens of opposition members, including their leaders, were arrested. Then the opposition sent a petition to Medvedev asking that Zyazikov be dismissed. Tens of thousands of Ingush signed the appeal, the opposition reports.

The main instrument in the fight against the president was the website ingushetia.ru, which the republic’s authorities had tried unsuccessfully to close down for the last year and a half. Even after the founder of the site, opposition leader Magomed Evloev, was killed, it continued to operate. Evloev was shot by police while being arrested at the Magas airport on August 31 this year.

After the death of Evloev, a real war was declared against Zyazikov. On September 10, his cousin, chief of the republic’s bus system Bekkhan Zyazikov, was killed. On September 26, another relative of the president, Ingushetian deputy minister of the economy Arsamak Zyazikov, was seriously wounded by a car bomb. Attacks on officials distantly related to the president became a common occurrence. Representatives of the opposition denied their involvement in the crimes, but the public linked the killings to the conflict with the president.

“Today is the Ingushetian people’s biggest celebration in the last six years,” Musa Keligov, former chief federal inspector for Ingushetia and Ingushetian opposition leader, told Kommersant. “They removed him from office because it had become intolerable, and maybe because they would imply have killed him.” According to Keligov, Zyazikov had lost control over Ingushetia and even his own house in recent times.

Keligov thought that temporary acting president Yunus-Bek Evkurov might stay on as permanent head of the republic. “He is not as well known in the republic, of course, as Ruslan Aushev, for example, but after what happened with Zyazikov, it is a person like Evkurov who can unite all the republic’s positive forces around him.”

Ingushetian representative in the Federation Council Issa Kostoev told Kommersant that the reason for Zyazikov’s dismissal was rising criminality in the republic. Statistics show that 52 law enforcement officers have been killed and 150 wounded there so far this year. Dozens of assassination attempts have been made against officials. Even in neighboring Chechnya the situation is much better, according to Interior Ministry data.

However, Kostoev says, changing the leadership will not solve all of the problems that have built up in the republic since its foundation. “We have had two generals in the leadership, one of whom [Aushev] was a hero, but the challenge still remains, as they say. To solve the problems, we don’t need a change of leaders, but intervention by the federal center,” Kostoev commented.

Former president of Ingushetia Ruslan Aushev told Kommersant, “Finally the authorities have made that decision. I think that they came to from consideration of the critical situation in the republic.” He expects that “the situation will be calmed to some extent,” and called Evkurov “the best choice for Ingushetia.”

No matter what personnel changes the Kremlin makes, the new leader of Ingushetia faces two overarching problems: the conflict with North Ossetia over the Prigorodny District and the massive unemployment in the republic. Nonetheless, tension in the republic should decrease temporarily.

Experts say the removal of Zyazikov is long overdue. Dmitry Badovsky, deputy head of the Institute of Social Systems, commented that “the situation in the republic long ago went beyond the political process to something reminiscent of a vendetta.” Mikhail Vinogradov noted that “even the lack of candidates acceptable to the Kremlin stopped being a factor in keeping Mr. Zyazikov in power.”

   &
What Zyazikov Is Known For

In April 2002, FSB Maj. Gen. Murat Zyazikov was elected president of Ingushetia with 19.4 and 53 percent of the vote in two rounds. The day before the first round of voting, one of the main candidates, Ingushetian interior minister and protégé of former president Aushev Khamzat Gutseriev, was disqualified for campaign violations.

While Zyazikov was president, Ingushetia was reliably one of the Kremlin’s biggest supporters in elections. In 2004, 98.18 percent of Ingushetian voters supported Vladimir Putin, and in the 2008 elections, 91.66 percent voted for Dmitry Medvedev. In the 2007 Duma elections, the United Russia Party received 98.72 percent of the vote (the second highest rate of support after Chechnya) with a turnout of 98 percent. Later, the opposition held the I Didn’t Vote campaign, gathering the signatures of 80,000 residents of the republic (54 percent of the voters), who claimed that they did not go to the polls.

In the autumn of 2003, conditions in Ingushetia began to deteriorate. There were continual terrorist acts and kidnappings and murders of officials and police. The largest terrorist act occurred on the night of June 21, 2004, when rebels attacked a number of facilities, killing 79 and wounding about 100.

On April 6, 2004, an assassination attempt was made against Zyazikov on the Nazran-Magas Highway. The driver of a small explosives-laden Russian car blew himself up near the president’s Mercedes 600. The armor on the president’s car saved him.

On September 1, 2004, one of the first demands of the terrorists who seized School No. 1 in Beslan was that Zyazikov come to the scene. The Ingushetian president did not come. He told Kommersant, “They are trying to ensnare me in that. I am staying completely out of it.” There were 1120 hostages, of whom 331 died. The investigation showed that the terrorists’ camp was in Ingushetia.

In March 2007, rebels kidnapped the president’s 79-year-old uncle Uruskhan Zyazikov. He spent a year and a half in captivity.

On August 31 of this year, one of the leaders of the Ingushetian opposition, Magomed Evloev, died under mysterious circumstances. He flew to Ingushetia on the same plane as the president, then was taken into police custody and “accidentally” shot in a police car.


What Happened in Zyazikov’s Presidency

Murat Zyazikov was elected president of Ingushetia on April 22, 2008, and reconfirmed in his position on June 15, 2005.

During his term in office, the population of the republic grew by 12 percent, from 445,400 in 2001 to 499,500 in 2007. This increase came in spite of a decrease in natural population growth. In 2001, there were 8753 births and 1875 deaths in the republic; in 2007, there were 8284 births and 1625 deaths.

Income almost quadrupled in the republic, but it still remained one of the poorest regions in the Russian Federation. In 2001, the average monthly wage there was 1758 rubles (77th place among the Russian regions) and pensions averaged 854 rubles. In 2007, wages had increased to 7285 rubles (82nd place) and pensions to 2977 rubles (last place). The number of unemployed also almost quadrupled, from 11,600 to 45,700.

The republic’s budget in 2001 was 2.1 billion rubles. In 2008 its planned level is 8.59 billion rubles. In 2001, Ingushetia received 1.2 billion rubles from the Federal Fund for the Support of the Regions, and in 2008 5 billion rubles were received from it. Gross regional output grew from 3.6 billion rubles in 2001 to 8.87 billion rubles in 2008 – an increase of 2.5 times. The rate of industrial growth fell. In 2001, the industrial production index rose 134.8 percent over the previous year. In 2007, it rose 76 percent, the largest reduction in growth rate in all of Russia that year. In 2001, 25,300 sq. m. of new housing was built in the republic. In the first year of Zyazikov’s term, it fell to 14,400 sq. m. In 2007, it had risen to 32,00 sq. m.

The number of crimes committed in the republic rose 20.9 percent in six years, from 1740 in 2001 to 2104 in 2007 (82nd place in the Russian Federation).


The Acting President of Ingushetia

Yunus-Bek Bamatgireevich Evkurov was born on July 29, 2963 in the village of Tarskoe, North Ossetian ASSR. In 1982, he joined Pacific Fleet marines. Later, he entered the Ryazan Higher Paratrooper Command School and graduated from it in 1989. In 1997, he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy and, in 2004, he graduated from the General Staff Academy. He served in the paratrooper forces and rose to chief of staff of the 217th Parachute Guard Regiment of the 98th Svirsk Guard Division of the Order of the Red Banner of Kutuzov, 2nd degree (Ivanovo). In June 1999, he commanded a unit of Russian troops that made a battle march from Bosnia to Kosovo to take control of the Pristine airport. Since 2004, he has been the deputy chief of the intelligence department of the Volga-Urals Military District, headquartered in Ekaterinburg.

Evkuov is a colonel. He was awarded the title Hero of Russia on April 13, 2000, for bravery in the second Chechen war. As a lieutenant colonel in charge of an intelligence group, Evkurov freed 12 hostage Russian soldiers. President Vladimir Putin personally awarded him the hero’s star in Jun 2000 in Georgievsky Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace.

Evkurov has also been awarded the Order of the Red Star, the Order of Bravery, two medals for gallantry and other honors.


Alla Barakhova, Musa Muradov, Natalia Bespalova, Vladislav Trifonov, Sergey Mashkin

All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 31, 2008

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