MOSCOW, July 27 (RIA Novosti) – Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the acting president of Russia’s Ingushetia republic, said he broke his ankle during his 249th jump on Saturday.
The former paratrooper and decorated military officer said his parachute chords bundled when he was finishing his jump in Magas, Ingushetia’s capital, during a national parachuting contest. The 50-year-old said he was briefly hospitalized after the injury and returned to the contest venue with his leg in a plaster cast.
His spokeswoman Irina Sokirko said earlier that Yevkurov's ankle was “weakened” after the June 2009 assassination attempt on him, when his motorcade was hit by a car packed with explosives driven by a suicide bomber.
Yevkurov has headed the violence-plagued Ingushetia, Russia’s smallest republic that borders Chechnya, since 2008.
Over a decade after the end of a war against Islamist separatists in Chechnya, Russian security forces continue to fight Islamist militants across the volatile North Caucasus region. Once confined mostly to Chechnya, the Islamist insurgency has spread in recent years across the multi-ethnic and predominantly Muslim region.
Earlier this month, Yevkurov stepped down to seek reelection to his post this fall, and President Vladimir Putin appointed him the republic’s acting head.
