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Russian Military: Key Chechen Warlord Killed
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said Tuesday that Russian elite troops killed Abu Movsayev, one of well-known Chechen rebel field commander, in a recent special operation.
"The federal units have carried out several special operations to eliminate rebel formations over the past two days. In a direct clash, they killed ten rebels, including infamous rebel field commander Abu Movsayev," Sergeyev told reporters in the Belarussian capital of Minsk, where he arrived Tuesday to attend a summit of the Customs Union of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
"This information needs to be confirmed by documents," he said, adding that there are only two things the rebel leaders can do: "stop resistance and surrender, or die."
Early Tuesday, acting Russian presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky told the press in Moscow that Movsayev's body has been found in Chechnya.
Movsayev, 41, a key ally of Aslan Maskhadov who is the president of the breakaway republic of Chechnya, and another Chechen rebel field commander Shamil Basyaev participated in a world-shaking raid on the town of Budyonnovsk in Russia's Stavropol territory in June 1995.
In 1996, he was appointed as head of the Security Department of the alleged Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Since October 1998, he has served as chief of the Chechen military commandant's special department.
Monday, Kremlin aide Yastrzhembsky denied media reports that the most prominent Chechen field commander Basayev had died of gangrene a few days ago at a rebel base in the mountains of south Chechnya.
"The reports of the death of Basayev are a canard, and I cannot confirm it," he told a news conference in Moscow.
Basayev was wounded in the leg when his groups broke out of Chechen capital Grozny in February and the injury developed into gangrene later. Several successive amputations were performed on his leg.
However, it seems doctors have failed to halt the process, which gives reason to believe that Basayev has probably died of a deadly infection.
Chechnya's separatist government also refuted the reports of Basayev's death, quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that Basayev did contract gangrene in the leg after it was partially amputated and had another operation, but his condition is now "satisfactory".
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