Kuban farmers state that power agents try to intimidate them by Chechen policemen

No threats from employees of the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) were addressed to the participants of the "tractor march", said the Kuban farmers, refuting the information that Chechen power agents had forced them to abandon their protest actions.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 21, Kuban farmers held a rally in the village of Kazanskaya, opposing the raiders' captures of land plots by huge agricultural holdings; and on the same day they started their tractor rally to Moscow. They were stopped by policemen in the Krasnodar Territory and Rostov Region; many of the activists were fined or arrested for the participation in the action.

The statement that one of the participants of the "tractor march" had complained about threats, received from people who presented themselves as employees of the Chechen MIA, was posted on October 22 on the website of the human rights media project "OVD-info".

The statement said that people, who presented themselves to farmer as Chechen power agents, "demanded from them to stop gathering and not to meddle in politics."

The information about the threats coming from agents of the Chechen MIA is "not true", a farmer Nikolai Maslov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

In his turn, Alexei Volchenko, the leader of the protest movement of Kuban farmers, has treated, in his conversation with the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, the appearance of threats allegedly expressed by employees of the Chechen MIA as a "provocation of special services."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.