On September 8, an injured suspected militant, Akhmed Chatayev, a Russian citizen of Chechen ethnicity holding a refugee status in Austria, was arrested.
[8] The day before (August 28), Dagestani rebels attacked a base of Russian Interior Ministry special forces, reportedly seizing its armory building and killing at least two Internal Troops paramilitary soldiers.
[9] According to Caucasian Knot tally, during the week of August 27 – September 2, a total of at least 50 people fell victim to armed conflict in the North Caucasus, not including the events in Georgia.
[12] According to the website Vestnik Kavkaza, "such a radical decision and even tragic victims seem to be less evil than another explosion in Georgian-Russian relations in the event of the violation of Dagestani section of the border by an armed group from Georgia.
"[13] Central Asia-Caucasus Institute analysis by Emil Souleimanov concluded: "As the counterinsurgent activities by federal and local armed forces gain momentum in Dagestan, the current epicenter of Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, where dozens of thousands of army and ministry of interior troops have concentrated recently, the pressure will increase on the insurgents to occasionally cross the Russian-Georgian, as well as the Russian-Azerbaijani borders, to secure a temporary safe haven.
"[14] On August 28, Georgian television reported that five young men from the village of Lapankuri in Telavi District, 20 kilometres from the Dagestani section of the border with Russia, had gone missing for several days.
[17] A man identified as Levan Khutsurauili,[18] described as one of the freed civilians, later said that he and his friends had been seized on August 26 by an armed group of about 15 bearded men while returning from a picnic near the border and told they would be shot if they tried to escape.
[19] Late on August 28, Georgian Interior Ministry released a brief statement saying that an armed group was detected and first reports emerged about movement of special forces in ground and air vehicles into the area.
[11] Deputy Interior Minister Nodar Kharshiladze stressed: "We can't definitely say who these paramilitary people are and what their purpose is, but it is clear they were conducting some kind of terroristic activities there.
[14] The killed Georgian troops were announced as being two officers of the Interior Ministry's special purpose police unit, Major Archil Chokheli (who was also the sambo coach of the national team of Georgia and former Europe and world champion in sambo, as well as former champion in kurash[22][23][24]) and Captain Solomon Tsiklauri, and Corporal Vladimer Khvedelidze who served as a medic with the Defence Ministry's special operations forces.
[15][16] On August 30, Georgian police released video footage showing dead bodies of several men in camouflage uniforms with their faces censored, and weapons recovered from the site of the clash, including a variety of automatic weapons, several anti-tank grenade launchers and at least two sniper rifles (one of them equipped with a noise suppressor), as well as communication and night vision equipment, Russian passports and copies of the Quran.
[29] On September 8, Interior Ministry announced it had captured one wounded member of an armed group, identifying the suspected militant as "a citizen of the Russian Federation from North Caucasus," Akhmet Chataev (Akhmed Chatayev), adding he was rendered the medical assistance and his life is not in a danger.
Regarding the alleged civilian hostages, KC said that "on the contrary, it is because the recruits released five Georgians, whom they incidentally met en route, the leakage occurred followed by subsequent tragic events.
Alternatively, they may have inferred at an early stage that the men were insurgents from Daghestan but killed them all the same, in order to perpetuate the uncertainty over their true identity and why they crossed the border and thus, by extension, the suspicion that Russia may have been behind the incident."
Caucasus expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Mamuka Areshidze, said it was "odd" that the special forces apparently did not try to take the gunmen alive for interrogation, as they could have shot to incapacitate rather than to kill.
Chatayev insisted that he had been brought by two Georgian Interior Ministry's counter-terrorist department officials, Sandro Amiridze and Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, as a negotiator to talk with a group of 17 Chechen and Kist militants that intended to travel to Chechnya via Dagestan.
According to Chatayev, he was unarmed and was wounded when an unknown[48] shooter suddenly shot him in his left leg as he was waiting for a reply from the authorities after relaying by phone the group's refusal to disarm.
In an 800-page report, Nanuashvili alleged that the Interior Ministry's counter-terrorist department itself had recruited 120 local Kists, Chechens (including veterans living abroad) and other North Caucasian refugees.
In August, a group of 16 Vainakhs decided to cross the Russian border on their own initiative, but were refused a passage and intercepted by Georgian Interior Ministry special forces deployed there by helicopter.
After the negotiations through prominent Chechen mediators did not bring a breakthrough in the standoff, as the militants responded to the demands they would disarm by insisting they would surrender their weapons only after they reached Pankisi, seven (not 11) of them and three Georgians (including two handlers of the gunmen) were killed, and the rest of them were then escorted to Turkey.
[16] Referring to North Caucasus peoples as "brothers," Saakashvili said: "We salute tourists but won't let raids of armed persons against peaceful population on Georgian territory.
"[45] At his own rally on the same day, Saakashvili said about "a very dangerous military provocation in the Lopota Gorge" related to an alleged greater Russian plot to "give them [Russian government] a pretext to use our internal disorders and internal divide for implementation of their sinister plans" and charged that his opponents who are "weeping today for the fate of terrorists and have not even utter a word about our [three special forces personnel] who died, knew very well what this provocation was about; what this mess was all about.
"[62] Representative of the Chechen diaspora in Georgia and advisor to the State Minister for Reintegration Issues, Meka Khangoshvili, made a statement stressing that the incident should not become a cause for tension between Georgians and the North Caucasian nations.
"[63] A Chechen secular separatist website ChechenCenter said that "the only country that benefits" from this incident is Russia, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin might to try to "divide and conquer" the Caucasus as the world watches the conflict in Syria.
[64][65] Captain Tsiklauri was posthumously awarded the Vakhtang Gorgasali Order, one of the highest decorations in Georgia, and buried on September 2 in Rusiani in a funeral attended by high officials including President Saakashvili.
[66] The funeral of Major Chokheli took place in Galavani on September 4, attended by Saakashvili, Interior Minister Bachana Akhalaia, chief of the National Olympic Committee Gia Natsvlishvili, other officials, and representatives of the opposition.
[73] In May 2013, the authorities re-examined corpses of Baghakashvili, Margoshvili and Zaurbekov; family members said they agreed for exhumations to be conducted despite Islam forbidding removing the dead from their graves, because they too want to find the truth.
Chatayev, reported as having a refugee status in Austria, denied the charge and pleaded his innocence, claiming that had arrived in the Lopota gorge to hold negotiation at a request of senior official of the Interior Ministry of Georgia and that the sniper wounded him in a leg while he was waiting for a reply from the government.
According to the report by the State Commission of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, the main organizer of the armed group was Akhmed Umarov, working closely with the special services of the Interior Ministry of Georgia.
Most of the 200 recruits had left peacefully before the crisis in Lapota began, returning to their homes (in Georgia, the European Union, Turkey and Egypt) after the group's Georgian handlers refused to allow them to cross into Russia.