Free Republic

It became known yesterday that Ichkerian President Abdul-Khalim Saidulaev has formed anew cabinet of ministers. The main sensation is that Shamil Basaev and Movladi Udugov as first deputy prime minister and minister of information and the press, respectively, after being dismissed from those posts by former president Aslan Maskhadov. The new Ichkerian administration intends to change both its domestic and foreign policies. Maskhadov's foreign minister, Ilyas Akhmadov, whom followers of Basaev criticized for his support of the idea of “limited sovereignty,” has lost his post. The last administration, formed by Maskhadov, who was killed on March 8, was dissolved by...

Chechen rebels have been fighting for more than a decade "Chechen separatist leaders have ordered a ceasefire for the month of February, a pro-rebel website reports. The Kavkaz Centre site said that Aslan Maskhadov, the former elected president of Chechnya, and warlord Shamil Basayev had ordered the ceasefire. It said all offensive actions were to be halted "as a display of goodwill". Moscow has not responded to the news. It has put millions of dollars on the heads of both men, whom it blames for atrocities like the Beslan siege. "We do not react to Kavkazcenter. This is not an...

The death of Shamil Basaev has highlighted acute challenges in financial footage of the Chechen resistance. There is no definite answer to the question of the utmost importance. Who’s going to run the financial route to fighting Chechnya? Via this route the money gathered by brothers in faith from worldwide has been supplied to Chechnya so far. The task of finding a suitable candidate able to step into the vacant position of the main resistance financier is rather a challenging one due to some suspicions. They are linked to habitual theft of the money on its way to the ordinary...

CHECHEN WARLORD WARNS OF NEW TERRORIST ATTACKS. Since masterminding the hostage-taking in the south Russian town of Budennovsk in the summer of 1995, radical Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev has claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist acts that have claimed hundreds of Russian lives. His ill-fated incursion into Daghestan in August 1999 in the wake of an unsuccessful attempt to sideline Chechen President Aslan Maskahdov served as the rationale for the Russian leadership to launch its second war against Chechnya in October of that year under the pretext of combating terrorism. Yet although Basaev is routinely reviled by leading...