The FSB has labeled two murdered Dagestani residents as terrorists.

Two militants killed in Dagestan were planning terrorist attacks on a railway line and a religious site, the FSB reported.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported yesterday, January 28, sources in law enforcement agencies reported a shootout in which two unidentified individuals were killed after opening fire on law enforcement officers. This attack on security forces was the third since May 2025, when a mass-casualty attack occurred in Makhachkala.

According to the FSB, yesterday's shootout disrupted preparations for sabotage and terrorist attacks planned by representatives of an international terrorist organization banned in Russia, the name of which has not been published. The targets of the murdered men were a "religious cult site" and a section of the Makhachkala-Derbent railway line on the North Caucasus Railway, Interfax quoted the agency's press release as saying.

According to investigators, two residents of Dagestan corresponded with a recruiter via Telegram and swore allegiance to a terrorist organization. They subsequently selected targets and constructed an improvised explosive device.

Security officials stated that during an attempt to commit a terrorist attack near the Ullubiyevo railway station in the Karabudakhkent district, the suspects offered armed resistance and were killed.

"There were no casualties among law enforcement officers or civilians." "Firearms, ammunition, and an improvised explosive device were found at the scene, which was defused by bomb disposal experts," the FSB noted. According to security forces, "extremist literature and symbols of a terrorist organization" were seized from the residences of the victims, RIA Novosti clarified, citing the security service's public relations center.

Previously, Dagestan has repeatedly recorded cases of fabricated executions of militants, with security forces portraying the dead as members of an underground organization without convincing evidence. Relatives of the victims and human rights activists have pointed out that many of the dead were civilians and did not offer armed resistance.

For example, in August 2016, the Gasanguseinov shepherd brothers were killed in the Shamil district and then demonstratively presented as militants, despite the fact that they were peaceful teenagers. In May 2020, six young men were killed in a forest in the Khasavyurt district; they were officially identified as ISIS members*, although local residents claimed they had simply returned from Moscow, where they had gone to earn money.

"Caucasian Knot" keeps a chronicle of armed incidents, attacks, explosions, and kidnappings in Dagestan.