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He even called his brigade the "Abkhaz Battalion."

I know that Georgians have a hard time sympathizing with the Russians about their Chechens problem since they supported Basayev's beheading of Georgian Christians in Abkhazia in 1992 and 1993. Now Russia has "UN peacekeepers" in Abkhazia, and they complain about the UN and Nato in the Balkans!

Although Basayev is hated by a lot of Chechens, there is a widespread belief that he owes his freedom to the loyalty of a network of supporters that stretches across the whole region and dates back to his involvement in the coalition that joined the Abkhaz fighting against Georgia in 1992-3.
Ruslan, a former fighter who was with Basayev in that conflict, told IWPR, “He’s kept a lot of old friends in the North Caucasus since the war in Abkhazia.”
In Abkhazia, Basayev led a battalion and was commander of the army troops of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples, a group formed in 1991 to unite the nations of the North and South Caucasus. Its president was Musa Shanibov, now a lecturer at the Kabardino-Balkar State University in Nalchik. Basayev later became the deputy defence minister of Abkhazia.
Ruslan believes that Basayev spends a lot of time outside Chechnya, moving constantly around the North Caucasus and relying on old comrades.
“There were people fighting in Abkhazia from practically all of the nationalities in the North Caucasus: Kabardinians, Cherkess, Balkars, even whole units of Cossacks,” Ruslan said. “And naturally, Basayev, being the deputy defence minister, had contact with all of them and continues to have contacts now.” - LINK
On October 2, 1992, Chechen and other North Caucasian volunteers blasted their way into the Abkhaz city of Gagra, on the frontline in Georgia's burgeoning civil war. Basayev was at their lead and, indeed, was soon de facto commander of the volunteer army of the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus, the ideological brainchild of intellectual Musa Shanibov. Forces under Basayev's control soon outnumbered even the Abkhaz. The volunteers saw action in nearly every major battle in the Abkhaz War, hardened into what Basayev called his "Abkhaz Battalion." The troops would later make up the nucleus of the Chechen armed forces. - LINK