Kostroma, 16 April: The Russian Defence Ministry has denied the reports of the exchange of fire that allegedly took place in Chechnya between two groups from the force structures.

"There has been no exchange of fire between the servicemen of the Defence Ministry's Vostok battalion commanded by Sulim Yamadayev, and the bodyguards of the (Moscow-backed) president of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. They were just "sabre-rattling ", and the scuffle between them did not result in casualties," head of the Main Directorate for Combat Training of the Armed Forces, Lt-Gen Vladimir Shamanov, has said. "It is too early to dot the i's. The circumstances of the traffic accident in which several vehicles of the Vostok battalion spontaneously drove into the motorcade of the president of Chechnya are being established," Shamanov said.

However, Shamanov said, "the measures taken by the commander of the Combined Force in the North Caucasus and the commander of the 42nd (Guards) Motor-Rifle Division have stabilized the situation, and now it is fully under control".

"There were no victims in the traffic accident, and reports to contrary in some mass media are mere fabrications. The conflict did take place, but it has been localized," Shamanov said.

For his part, Army Gen Anatoliy Kulikov, president of the Club of Military Commanders of the Russian Federation and former interior minister, said that the incident between the servicemen of the Vostok battalion and Ramzan Kadyrov's bodyguard occurred due to the fact that Chechnya does not have a unified agency which could coordinate the movement of the force structures' units within the republic.

"The incident shows that in Chechnya there is no mechanism of interaction. The efficient link that should be formed by the federal structures there does not exist," Kulikov told journalists in Kostroma.

"I don't want to blame anyone but this means that all the issues of movement of force structure's units in the state-of-emergency zone, the zone of counterterrorist operation, which we find in Chechnya, should be agreed and coordinated by a unified agency. This would solve the confusion," Kulikov went on to say. (Passage omitted).