Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of Russia's turbulent Ingushetia region, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that corruption amongst officials was plaguing his small republic and aiding an Islamist insurgency.
In June a suicide bomb attack left him fighting for his life, but he has since recovered.
Following are key facts on the 46-year-old ex-paratrooper:
* Yevkurov, an ethnic Ingush, was born in 1963 in the neighbouring Russian republic of North Ossetia. A career soldier who rose to the rank of general, he graduated from the elite Ryazan Airborne Forces Academy. He was named a Hero of Russia for leading the audacious 1999 Russian operation to seize Pristina airport from under the noses of NATO forces advancing into Kosovo.
* Yevkurov asked senior commanders not to send him into action when the Kremlin was fighting rebels in neighbouring Chechnya, ethnically close to Ingushetia.
* Yevkurov has been trying to clamp down on official corruption and poverty, blamed for driving young people into the arms of Islamist rebels.
* In 1992, Yevkurov’s home village in North Ossetia was embroiled in battles between the mainly Ingush residents and local North Ossetians, over land that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin transferred to North Ossetia in 1944. Tens of thousands of Ingush fled North Ossetia, and their demand to return home has bedevilled relations between the neighbouring republics and proven a major challenge to Yevkurov’s presidency.
* Human rights groups say they have found Yevkurov to be straightforward to deal with and sincere in his efforts to rein in abuses by security forces. Yevkurov has also been widely praised for his success in reconciling dozens of local clans involved in bloody feuds.
