Ruslan Germanovich GelayevHis name is also often transliterated as "Khamzat" and "Gelaev". (; ; 16 April 1964 – 28 February 2004) was a Chechen military commander and prominent military figure of the Chechen resistance against Russia. Albeit a controversial figure, Gelayev was commonly viewed as an abrek and a well-respected, ruthless fighter.Milestones, TIME, 8 March 2004 His operations spread well beyond the borders of Chechnya and even outside Russia and into Georgia. He was killed while leading a raid into the Russian Republic of Dagestan in 2004.
Biography Ruslan Gelayev was born in 1964 in the village of Komsomolskoye (Saadi-Kotar) near Urus-Martan, 10 years after his parents had returned from the Stalinist deportation of Chechens into Central Asia. He was from Chechen Highland teip Gukhoy. Gelayev lived for several years outside Chechnya in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, held various jobs and, at one point, served in the Soviet Army.
Georgian-Abkhazian conflict In 1992–1993, Gelayev fought in the War in Abkhazia, on the side of separatists battling the Georgian government. He fought as a volunteer for the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus militia, which had been initiated by Russian intelligence, serving under Shamil Basayev. Together with the Chechen Battalion, Gelayev took part in the Battle of Gagra, which marked a turning point in the war.Vicken Cheterian, War and Peace in the Caucasus: Ethnic Conflict and the New Geopolitics, page 337
After his return to Chechnya, he joined the forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, taking command of the special forces regiment Borz (Борз, "Wolf" in Chechen) made up of veterans of the Abkhaz conflict. During the subsequent war with Russia, Timur Mutsurayev wrote a song dedicated to the unit, "Gelayev's Spetsnaz!" (Гелаевский спецназ!), which became popular in Chechnya. In 1993–1994, the unit took part in combat actions against the anti-Dudayev Chechen opposition forces of Ruslan Labazanov and Beslan Gantamirov who were later being aided by Russian covert operations operatives and mercenaries recruited by the Russian secret service FSK from the ranks of the Russian Army.
First Chechen War Gelayev fought against the Russian federal forces in the First Chechen War of 1994–1996, notably as a senior commander in the Battle of Grozny, for which he became one of the first to be awarded the Chechnya's highest medal Kioman Syi (Honor of the Nation). In early 1995, he became the commander of the South-Western Front for the separatist forces, tasked with defense of the Argun Gorge area. The Russians nicknamed him the "Black Angel" (Чёрный ангел),Dispatches, Chechnya: The Dirty War, Channel 4 documentary, 2006. after his radio communications call sign, "Angel".
Following the fall of Grozny and the Russian push into the highlands, Gelayev personally led the defense of the mountain village of Shatoy, where he was wounded several times. Mumadi Saidayev then took over the command of the front.COLONEL HUSEIN ISKHANOV During this battle, on 27 May 1995, Gelayev announced that if the aerial bombing of the village continued, a number of captive Russian military aviation officers would be killed every day and, according to the Russian human rights group Memorial, eight Russian POWs were executed as Gelayev carried out this threat.Behind Their Backs: Russian forces' use of civilians as hostages and human shields during the Chechnya war (I. Introduction), Memorial, 1997 The later President of Ichkeria (and still later the self-proclaimed leader of the Caucasus Emirate) Dokka Umarov initially served under his command, together with Akhmed Zakayev, before they left it to form their own units.
On 16 April 1996, Gelayev and Saudi Arabian pan-Islamist militant Ibn al-Khattab ambushed and destroyed a large convoy of Russian armored vehicles in the famous Shatoy ambush, killing scores - or possibly hundreds - of federal soldiers, almost all of them within the first 15 minutes of the attack,Armor Volume 109, Issue 6, page 25 with minimal losses on their own side. Previously, on 6 March 1996, Gelayev had led a surprise raid on Grozny, seizing large parts of the city for two days and inflicting serious losses on Russian forces, before leaving with more than 100 civilian hostages.Russia-Chechnya: Chain of Mistakes and Crimes Armed Conflict in Chechnya: Principal Stages and Important Events, Memorial This was seen as a rehearsal before the recapture of the city in the Battle of Grozny (August 1996), in an operation led by Basayev in which Gelayev also participated, and that ended the war.
After the war, Gelayev became a deputy prime minister under the new Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov in April 1997. He went on a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and took the name Hamzat. The following year, in January 1998, he was appointed the defence minister of Chechnya, a largely honorific post which he held until he was replaced by Magomed Khambiyev in July 1999. Gelayev became the first deputy defense minister in charge of security forces, including personal command of the Sharia Guard. Gelayev, however, maintained links with both Maskhadov and his rivals, in particular with Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and Salman Raduyev.
Second Chechen War At the start of the Second Chechen War in late 1999, Gelayev commanded a force of some 1,500 fighters in the siege of Grozny, charged with defense of the south-western sector of the city. However, he and most of his men left the city without orders in January 2000, which left it open to attack.The Rebel Who Rides to Russia's Rescue, The Moscow Times, 2 October 2002 Following Gelayev's unauthorized withdrawal from Grozny, Maskhadov demoted him from the rank of brigadier general to a private and stripped him of all military decorations.
In February–March 2000, Gelayev's forces took heavy losses as they withdrew from Grozny to the mountains of southern Chechnya, where they discovered that their mountain bases had been destroyed by Russian aircraft, leaving them starving, freezing, and low on ammunition. At that point, the notorious Chechen warlord Arbi Barayev contacted Gelayev, promising him aid and transportation to a safe area. When Gelayev's forces arrived at the specified meeting place, where buses were supposed to be waiting to evacuate their wounded,Paul J. Murphy, The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror they were ambushed by a large number of Russian troops. They retreated to Gelayev's native village of Komsomolskoye (Saadi-Kotar). There, around a thousand or more rebels were trapped and the village was pounded for weeks by the federal forces in the Battle of Komsomolskoye, one of the bloodiest battles of the war, ending with hundreds of Chechen fighters and civilians dead, along with more than 50 government troops (according to Russian figures). Gelayev escaped, but with only a fraction of his men, and many of demoralized survivors decided to give up the fight.Fatigue Thins Chechen Rebels' Ranks, Los Angeles Times, 3 April 2000 Anna Politkovskaya wrote, "How could he ever think of taking the war home, to Komsomolskoe, knowing in advance that his own home village would be destroyed!"Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya
Some time after this crushing defeat at Komsomolskoye, the Russian government attempted to negotiate with Gelayev, since he was believed to be in conflict with the other Chechen commanders (especially with Barayev, against whom Gelayev fought a brief personal war following Barayev's apparent betrayal of him at Komsomolskoye). In November 2000, a Kremlin envoy confirmed that Russian federal authorities were involved in talks with Gelayev, but this information was refuted later.Chronology of events involving Chechen guerrillas , Jane's In 2002, pro-Moscow Chechen government leader Akhmad Kadyrov said to Politkovskaya that he had sent his envoys to negotiate with Gelayev several times.Akhmad Kadyrov: Had I been the dictator of Chechnya « Anna Politkovskaya, Novaya Gazeta, 22 March 2002 In 2003, Gelayev publicly denounced Kadyrov's claims as "blatant lies" from a "despicable traitor".Interview with Commander Khamzat Gelayev, Kavkaz Center, 27 October 2003 According to The Independent, Gelayev's alleged secret talks with Kadyrov "broke down in early 2001 when Moscow refused to guarantee Gelayev's safety if he laid down his arms" and there were also rumours of earlier secret collaboration between Gelayev and the Russians, including the circumstances of his withdrawal from Grozny and his escape from Komsomolskoye. In 2002, a critical article in The Moscow Times called him "the rebel who rides to Russia's rescue".
In 2001, Gelayev decided to rebuild his forces in the remote Pankisi Gorge across the Georgian border. There, Gelayev had built up a significant armed force from hundreds of Chechen refugees, local Kists (Georgian Chechens), and Ingush and Dagestani volunteers, as well as scores of international mujahideen who had travelled there (mostly Azeris, Turks and Arabs). In August 2001, Gelayev played a crucial role in releasing Russian human rights activist Svetlana Kuzmina, who had been held in Chechen captivity for more than two years. Gelayev acted upon the request of Louisa Islamova, the wife of his friend and rebel commander Lechi Islamov, who was being held in Moscow's Lefortovo prison pending trial (Islamov died there, allegedly poisoned.He chose martyr's fate, Kavkaz Center ) Islamova had tracked down Vyacheslav Izmailov, a former federal military officer turned a journalist for Novaya Gazeta, and offered to try to persuade the rebels to free hostages if Izamailov would help her try to secure her husband's release in court. Gelayev wrote a note warning Kuzmina's captors that if they did not free the woman, they would become his deadly enemies.780 Days in Chechen Captivity, Gazeta.Ru, 2001/08/09 Meanwhile, Georgian authorities were accused of negotiating a deal to supply and arm Gelayev's force in return for Gelayev's leading a raid on behalf of Georgia into the disputed Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia (the October 2001 Kodori crisis). Gelayev earned admiration from senior Georgian politicians, despite the failure of the attempt during which at least 40 people were killed (including five UN observers in a shot down helicopter). Responding to Russian accusations, Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze said publicly that he had seen no evidence Gelayev was a terrorist, and described him as an "educated person.", The Russia Journal, 4 September 2002