A criminal case has been opened in Kabarda–Balkaria against a 17-year-old teenager the authorities accuse of being involved in an attack on a traffic police officer in Nalchik on 4 July.
The teenager, from Kabarda–Balkaria’s Urvansky district, whose name has not been disclosed, has been charged with assisting terrorism, preparing a terrorist act and attempted theft of a service weapon, according to the republic’s Investigative Committee.
The authorities have not reported when or under what circumstances the youth was detained, having only announced that he was in police custody.
According to the Investigative Committee, the teenager ‘succumbed to the persuasion of a local resident’, a 20-year-old man named Alan Kardanov, who, the investigation alleges, supported terrorist organisations and planned attacks on state bodies and law-enforcement officers. Investigators say that this man created an ‘isolated unit’ of an international terrorist structure, and that the youth agreed under his ‘persuasion and inducement’ to take part in the attack.
The incident took place on 4 July at the junction of Nogmova Street and Lenin Avenue in the centre of Kabarda–Balkaria’s capital Nalchik. According to the Interior Ministry, a traffic police crew had stopped a taxi that had violated traffic rules. At that moment, a young man ran up to an officer with a knife and began to strike him, attempting to seize his service weapon. Law-enforcement officers reported that the alleged organiser of the attack was killed at the scene, and that the teenager managed to flee. The injured traffic police officer was taken to the republican clinical hospital with multiple wounds and was in a serious condition.
Immediately after the attack, the Head of Kabarda–Balkaria, Kazbek Kokov, said that ‘there will be no mercy for those who violate the constitutional order’ and that they ‘will be destroyed’.
According to the independent Russian outlet Caucasian Knot, this is the first armed incident to take place in Kabarda–Balkaria in 15 months, with the last case involving armed militants taking place in April 2024.
Elizaveta Chukharova
