Limansky clashes

Yandyki, or sometimes Yandykov, is a village 9 km from Liman in the south-west of Astrakhan Oblast. At the time of the incident, the village's population numbered 3.5 thousand with 11% of the population being ethnic Kalmyks while 9% of the village's population consisted of ethnic Chechen migrant workers. The rest of the village's population, besides a small Tartar and Kazakh population, is predominately Russian, who self-identify as Astrakhan Cossacks. Although the village had a marginal Chechen presence since the 1970s when a family had moved in as cattle farmers, the vast majority of the village's Chechen population had moved fleeing the Chechen wars as well as from economic hardships in Chechnya. Both of the village's bars where owned and operated by Chechens. Due to lack of work in the village, many of the youths would join local roving gangs, that would oftentimes engage in street battles, which the Russian NGO Memorial pointed out as the likely starting point for the clashes as the gangs often fell along ethnic lines. Additionally, Memorial also cited heightened Anti-Chechen sentiment due to the ongoing Insurgency in the North Caucasus, with local Cossack officials calling the Chechen population "temporary guests" on Cossack land who also viewed them as a threat to a proposed oil-pipeline through the region due to fears of Wahhabism. Despite this there is no evidence that any of the Chechens in Yandyki supported Wahhabism, as they had fled the Wahhabist governed Chechnya for Russia. There was a heightened sectarian nature between ethnic groups in Yandyki, with local authorities doing little to intervene, often choosing not to investigate sectarian crimes such as complaints from Russians that Chechens “insulted the Russian girl” and from Chechens complaining that Russians “beat the Chechen.” ==Events==

The conflict started after a series of Russian Orthodox Cross graves in the local cemetery where vandalized from 21 to 22 February 2005, alongside the grave was a newly built monument to Eduard Kokmadjiev, a local Kalmyk that had died in the Chechen wars. After Boldyrev died the local police broke ranks and began to search every Chechen house in the village without warrant or cause, arresting some 14 Chechens on the charges of murder, conspiracy, and hooliganism. The masked crowd made their way through the village and burned all Chechen homes, and beat all Chechens they could get their hands on, including Khusainov. Behind the crowd was a firetruck that was there to extinguish fires that spread from the Chechens houses to Russian houses. There was at least one incident of a child running out of a burning house, just for the crowd to try and throw them back in. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that they could have dispersed the crowd and prevented the pogrom, but chose not to "shoot into the crowd" to "prevent further harm." Despite that, some of the local police hid most of the village's Chechens in a local club. ==Aftermath==

Later in the day on August 18 the local authorities opened criminal proceedings for rioting, however, no arrests were made despite substantial video evidence of several unmasked participants. On August 31 the deputy of the local ROVD unit was dismissed for failing to stop the riot. Only a single participant in the riot was arrested and tried by Russia, Anatoly Bagiev, who was ultimately sentenced to seven years in prison for participating in mass riots and for calling for active disobedience to the legitimate demands of government officials. ==See also==