Three Ingushetian teenagers suspected of ‘preparing a terrorist act’

On 14 March, three minors suspected of involvement in planning a terrorist attack against the Orthodox Church of the Protection of the Holy Virgin Mary in the town of Sunzha located 30 kilometres from the capital of the republic, were arrested in Ingushetia. This was reported by the regional department of the Investigative Committee of Russia.

According to the Investigative Committee’s version, the teenagers joined a terrorist organisation in August 2024 and illegally acquired a cache of weapons and ammunition that they later hid. The teenagers were allegedly planning to use the weapons to attack the Orthodox church. Their names and exact ages were not given in the official statement.

The arrests follow a series of detentions that began in August 2024, when Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had foiled an attack on the church and detained six people suspected of preparing a terrorist attack.

According to the FSB, those detained in August 2024 were Russian citizens and adherents of a banned international terrorist organisation. Its name was not reported, but, presumably, it was connected to the Islamic State – the FSB officers circulated operational footage in which one of the detainees said that he received the instruction to attack the church from a native of Daghestan living in Syria.

During searches, the detainees were allegedly found in possession of an improvised explosive device, components for its manufacture, as well as firearms and edged weapons. They confessed to planning attacks on an Orthodox church in Sunzha and law enforcement officers.

The two cases have now been merged into a single proceeding.

The head of Ingushetia, Mahmud-Ali Kalimatov, said that the planned terrorist attack in Sunzha was intended to be carried out in a similar manner to the attacks that took place in June 2024 in Daghestan, when several armed men simultaneously attacked churches and synagogues in Makhachkala and Derbent, killing 22 people, including 16 law enforcement officers and several civilians, one of whom was a 66-year-old Orthodox priest from Derbent. Five of the attackers were killed.

Russian law enforcement agencies have reported other criminal cases related to the preparation of attacks on Orthodox churches. For example, at the end of 2024, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don received a criminal case against Idris Idibekov, an 18-year-old citizen of Tajikistan, accused of preparing an attack on an Orthodox church in Adygea. It has not yet been considered.

Similar attacks on churches in the North Caucasus have happened before. In 2018, six people were killed and four more injured after an attack on a church in the Daghestani city of Kizlyar. Five parishioners and the attacker were killed, while the injured included two police officers. The attacker was reportedly a member of the Islamic State.

In the same year, seven people were killed, including four attackers, after militants attempted to storm a church in the Chechen capital Grozny.

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