August 18, 2009 By Citizen M

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – August 18, 2009

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TODAY: Violence explodes in Ingushetia; Interior Minister fired. Wall rumored to be built between Georgia and Abkhazia; Georgia to leave CIS.  Russian diplomats expelled.  Dozens missing in hydropower plant disaster.  Ship found.

President Medvedev has dismissed Ingush Interior Minister Ruslan Meiriyev after a suicide bombing in Nazran which killed 20 people and injured 138.  Tatyana Lokshina from Human Rights Watch has described the attack as ‘a big blow to the Kremlin’, which is wrestling with insurgency in all corners of the region.  Ingushetian President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has said that it is in the interests of ‘the United States, Britain, and Israel’ to destabilize the Caucasus, and ‘to prevent Russia from reviving the former Soviet might’.  A commentator in the Times suggests, ‘the hamfisted attempt by the President of Ingushetia to blame the violence on Britain, the US and Israel illustrates the troubles of the Kremlin, which cannot renounce its recognition of the two statelets’ of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  There are key facts about Ingushetia on Reuters.