Spetsnaz, are special forces in many post-Soviet states. Historically, this term referred to the Soviet Union's Spetsnaz GRU, special operations units of the GRU, the main military intelligence service. Today it refers to special forces branches and task forces subordinate to ministries including defence, internal affairs, or emergency situations in countries that have inherited their special purpose units from the now-defunct Soviet security agencies.
OMON is a system of special police units within the National Guard of Russia. It previously operated within the structures of the Soviet and Russian Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD). Originating as the special forces unit of the Soviet Militsiya in 1988, it has played major roles in several armed conflicts during and following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Rus' was one of the special forces (spetsnaz) units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (MVD). Rus' belonged to the Independent Operative Purpose Division (ODON) rapid deployment division of the Internal Troops of Russia, the gendarmerie force of the MVD, and was assigned primarily to counter-terrorism duties.
The Special Rapid Response Unit or SOBR, from 2002 to 2011 known as OMSN, is a spetsnaz unit of the National Guard of Russia.
The 1999 war in Dagestan, also known as the Dagestan incursions, was an armed conflict that began when the Chechen-based Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (IIPB), an Islamist group, led by Shamil Basayev, Ibn al-Khattab, Ramzan Akhmadov and Arbi Barayev, invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, on 7 August 1999, in support of the Shura of Dagestan separatist rebels. The war ended with a major victory for the Russian Federation and Republic of Dagestan, and the retreat of the IIPB. The invasion of Dagestan served as the main casus belli alongside the series of apartment bombings in September 1999 for the Second Chechen War.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Chechen insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then, there have been dozens of suicide attacks within and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties among Russian security personnel and civilians. The profiles of the suicide bombers have varied, as have the circumstances surrounding the bombings.
Rappani Khalilov, also known as Rabbani, was the militant leader of the Shariat Jamaat of the Caucasian Front during the Second Chechen War, in the volatile southern Russian republic of Dagestan. He was killed on September 17, 2007, in a fierce shoot-out with the Russian special forces.
The 2000 Zhani-Vedeno ambush took place on March 29, 2000, when a mechanized column of Russian Interior Ministry troops was ambushed in the southern Vedensky District of Chechnya. As the result of the attack on the convoy and on Russian relief forces, scores of Russian special police and paramilitary troops were killed or captured. 37 OMON officers in the column and six in a relief column were killed and 11 more were taken hostage, 9 of whom were executed soon after Russian command refused to swap them for the arrested military officer Yuri Budanov.
Vilayat Dagestan, formerly known as Shariat Jamaat, was an Islamist Jihadist group based in the Russian republic of Dagestan and is part of the Caucasus Emirate. The group is closely associated with the separatist conflicts in the nearby Russian republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia, and was created during the Second Chechen War in favor of Dagestan's independence as an Islamic state.
The insurgency in the North Caucasus was a low-level armed conflict between Russia and militants associated with the Caucasus Emirate and, from June 2015, the Islamic State, in the North Caucasus. It followed the official end of the decade-long Second Chechen War on 16 April 2009. It attracted volunteers from the MENA region, Western Europe, and Central Asia. The Russian legislation considers the Second Chechen War and the insurgency described in this article as the same "counter-terrorist operations on the territory of the North Caucasus region".
The Islamic Djamaat of Dagestan, known in Russia as the Kadar zone, was an Islamist political entity in the Buynaksky District of Dagestan consisting of the fortified villages of Kadar, Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi. In the late 1990s, the Djamaat, heavily influenced by militant Wahhabism, declared independence and ejected Dagestani officials from the area. After a series of armed conflicts with Dagestani police and local moderate Muslims, the Djamaat broke off from government control. Sharia law was introduced in the villages, the Russian Constitution was declared void and an alliance was signed with Chechen forces with the aim of establishing an Independent Islamic Republic in the Caucasus.
The 2012 Makhachkala attack occurred on 3 May 2012 after two suicide bombers detonated explosive-filled cars near a traffic police checkpoint in Makhachkala, a city and capital in the republic of Dagestan, Russia, killing as many as 40 people. More than 130 others were injured in the blasts, at least 67 of them seriously. Government sources speculated that the bombers may have been transporting TNT to a downtown location in anticipation of the annual May Day parade on May 9.
