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Last Updated: Apr 29, 2008 - 1:45:33 PM |
The Vostok (East) battalion and its Zapad (West) counterpart
were established in 2003. They are affiliated with the Defense Ministry's 42nd
Motorized Rifle Division that is permanently stationed in Chechnya, and are at
the same time directly subordinate to Russian military intelligence (GRU). Like
the Kadyrov family, the Yamadayev brothers fought during the 1994-96 war in the
ranks of the Chechen resistance commanded by Aslan Maskhadov, but distanced
themselves from Maskhadov in the summer of 1999 after renegade field commander
Shamil Basayev launched the first of his incursions into neighboring Daghestan.
In contrast to Zapad, the Vostok battalion, like the police and security forces
loyal to Kadyrov, is manned primarily by former resistance fighters who took
advantage of successive amnesties to lay down their arms. In a November 23
interview posted on the website utro.ru, Yamadayev accused the North and South
battalions, which are subordinate to the Chechen Interior Ministry, of being in
cahoots with the Chechen resistance and repeatedly thwarting operations
conducted by his own men against the remaining resistance fighters.
Vostok as a unit, and Yamadayev as its commander, have long had a reputation as
loose cannons. Daghestan National Security Council Secretary Akhmednabi
Magdigadjiyev belatedly identified Vostok as responsible for an incident in May
2005 in which uniformed armed Chechens closed in on the Avar-populated village
of Borozdinovskaya in northeastern Chechnya, burned several homes, and abducted
11 men who have never been found. Yamadayev denied any involvement in that
incident, and some Russian commentators suggested that Kadyrov (then Chechen
deputy prime minister) might have orchestrated it in order to discredit Yamadayev.
A legal demand for compensation brought by Borozdinovskaya villagers against
the Russian Defense Ministry was rejected.
In the fall of 2006, just days after Yamadayev's men went on the rampage at a
meat plant near St. Petersburg owned by one of Yamadayev's rivals, a small
detachment from Vostok was included in the Russian peacekeeping force deployed
to Lebanon.
In late February, Adam Demilkhanov, a relative of Kadyrov's who represents
Chechnya in the Russian State Duma, said that residents of Chechnya's
southeastern Vedeno Raion had complained about unspecified reprisals committed
by Vostok, triggering speculation that Kadyrov had decided to neutralize the
potential threat posed by Vostok and Yamadayev. Whether the confrontations that
resulted from traffic collisions on April 13 and 14 in Gudermes were
spontaneous or planned in advance by Kadyrov, the Chechen leadership seized on
them to demand that either Vostok be disbanded or Yamadayev replaced as its
leader.
The lack of an immediate response to that request serves to highlight the
diverging views and preferences within the Russian leadership with regard to
the situation in Chechnya and Kadyrov as its leader. While President Putin, his
administration, and the Federal Security Service have consistently expressed
their support for Kadyrov, the Defense Ministry is said to have profoundly
disliked and mistrusted the Kadyrov family ever since Putin first named Akhmad
Kadyrov, Ramzan's father, as republic head in June 2000. On April 16, senior Defense
Ministry official Lieutenant General Vladimir Shamanov denied that any armed
clash in Gudermes involving Vostok personnel ever took place. He said that the
two sides simply engaged in "saber-rattling," but that there was no
shooting and no casualties.
The choice of Shamanov to issue that denial was in itself significant. In
1999-2000 he commanded the Western Group of Federal Forces in Chechnya, and
Chechen Republic human rights ombudsman Nurdi Nukhadjiyev, who is close to
Kadyrov, last year formally protested his appointment (after a stint as
governor of Ulyanovsk Oblast and then as an aide to Serdyukov's predecessor as
defense minister, Sergei Ivanov) as head of the General Staff training
department on the grounds that men under Shamanov's command committed serious
human rights violations, including opening fire on fugitives.
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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