(Itar-Tass) - - Convoys with police officers sent to Chechnya from other regions of Russia have been fired at twice in the republic over the past 24 hours. As Itar-Tass learnt at the Chechen Interior Ministry on Saturday, on the eve, at about 18.00 Moscow time, unidentified persons fired at a convoy of three cars in the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny. As a result, an officer of the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Khakasia was injured. The convoy was moving from Mozdok to a point of temporary dislocation. The wounded was hospitalised. Besides, as a law enforcer told Itar-Tass, a convoy of three cars was attacked on the highway “Kavkaz” in Gudermes at approximately the same time. As a result, a police officer of Interior Department Ministry of the Khabarovsk Territory was injured.
Okay. I'm confused. Khabarovsk is in the Russian Far East. Gudermes is in the Caucasus, to whit, in Chechnya. TDY? A personal visit? A secret mission?
A 3-car convoy implies he's a fairly large cheese and that the mission wasn't secret. Unless he's a larger than 3-car cheese he's not going to get an official reception even if he's visiting Maw and Paw back at the old homestead. So it's probably TDY.
Khabarovsk is the next major stop on the Baikal-Amur railway after Birobidzhan, which is the capital of the stretch of Siberia that used to be the "Jewish Autonomous Region." Khabarovsk is a larger city, but it has the advantage of being even colder and the surrounding territory more desolate, the area where they used to keep some of the better Gulags.