List of Second Chechen War Assassinations - Assassinations in Chechnya

Assassinations in Chechnya

• May 2000 - Moderate Chechen separatist politician Ruslan Alikhadzhyev abducted and killed by the Russian forces in Shali.
• May 31, 2000 - Sergei Zveryev, Russia's second highest official in Chechnya, was killed by a remote controlled bomb in Grozny. The city Mayor Supyan Makhchayev, who was with Zveryev, was injured in the bombing, and his assistant was also killed.
• May 4, 2001 - A prominent Chechnya's religious leader, Mullah Nasruddin Matuyev, was shot dead by two unidentified gunmen when he was returning home from the mosque in the village of Novye Atagi.
• April 18, 2001 - Car of the Russian human rights activist Victor Popkov was attacked in Chechnya by unknown assailants. On June 2 he died of his wounds in a hospital in Krasnogorsk near Moscow.
• June 6, 2001 - Local administration head of the village Gekhi-Chu Lema Idrisov was killed in the Urus-Martan district; 17 administration officials and six heads of village administrations have been killed in Chechnya in the eight months since January 2001. On June 10 Lukman Madalov, head of the administration of village Valerik in the Achkhoy-Martan district, was shot dead in his house.
• September 10, 2001 - Lecha Kadyrov, a nephew the head of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow administration Akhmad Kadyrov, and three of his companions were shot dead near Kurchaloy, east Chechnya, after attackers fired at their car.
• October 17, 2001 - A surface-to-air missile shot down a VIP Mi-8 helicopter over the Chechen capital Grozny, killing all aboard. The helicopter was carrying Major-General Anatoli Pozdnyakov, member of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Major-General Pavel Varfolomeyev, deputy director of staff of the Defence Ministry of Russia, eight colonels, and three crewmembers. According to Anna Politkovskaya, who interviewed General Pozdnyakov an hour before his death, the attack was actually work of the corrupt elements in the Russian military in Chechnya.
• November 29, 2001 - A young Chechen woman, Elza Gazuyeva, carried out an assassination attempt on the Urus-Martan military district commandant, identified only as General Geydar Gadzhiev, blowing herself up with a hand grenade near a group of Russian soldiers. Gazuyeva had lost a husband, two brothers, and a cousin in the war. Gadzhiev, who was accused of atrocities against civilians by locals, reportedly had personally summoned Elza to witness her husband's and brother's torture and execution. He and several other soldiers later died of their wounds.
• January 27, 2002 - A Russian Interior Ministry Mi-8 was shot down in Nadterechny District, killing eleven people including crew. Among those killed in the crash were Russian Deputy Interior Minister Lieutenant-General Mikhail Rudchenko, responsible for security in the Southern Federal District, and deputy commander of the Internal Troops Major-General Nikolai Goridov, as well as several other high-ranking officers including colonels Oriyenko, Stepanenko, and Trafimov. The chopper's downing coincided with the five-year anniversary of the election of separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov as President of Chechnya.

• March 19, 2002 - One of the leaders of the radical wing of the Chechen resistance and the influential Jordanian volunteer, Amir Khattab, was killed by a poisoned letter in an operation by the Federal Security Service (FSB). The messenger, a Dagestani double agent known as Ibragim, was reportedly tracked down and killed a month later in Azerbaijan on Shamil Basayev's orders.

• September 10, 2002 - Administrative head of the Nadterechny District, Akhmad Zavgayev (brother of Doku Zavgayev), was killed as unknown gunmen opened fire his car in his home village of Beno-Yurt, several kilometers away from Chechnya's border with North Ossetia.

• November 16, 2002 - Lieutenant-General Igor Shifrin, head of the Glavspetzstroi (Main Directorate of Special Construction of the Ministry of Defense), was killed in ambush in Grozny when his and another vehicle came under intense fire from automatic weapons. During the manhunt for the killers of the general, two policemen were killed and two more were wounded; an unspecified number of Chechen gunmen were reported killed in the firefight.

• March 5, 2003 - The Chechen OMON special-purpose police commander, Dzhabrail Yamadayev, was killed in his own house in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno by a bomb planted under a couch that he slept on; the explosive device was so powerful that the house was almost completely destroyed. Dzhabrail Yamadayev was one of Chechnya’s best-known and influential figures. During the First Chechen War the Yamadayev brothers fought against the federal troops and enjoyed great influence as field commanders, but changed sides in 1999.

• May 9, 2004 - Pro-Russian President Akhmad Kadyrov was assassinated in a blast of the substantial bomb inside of a Grozny's Uvays Akhtayev Stadium during the celebration of Russian Victory Day. A number of other top government and military officials were killed or injured in the attack including: The Chairman of the State Council of Chechnya, Hussein Isayev, the military commander in the North Caucasus, Colonel-General Valery Baranov, the Chechen interior minister, Alu Alkhanov and the military commandant of Chechnya, Major-General Grigory Fomenko. In all, 13 persons in the VIP stand were killed, and 53 were wounded. Kadyrov had survived at least three preceding bomb attacks: one on his Grozny headquarters in 2002, one by a pair of female suicide bombers at a religious festival in Iliskhan-Yurt on May 14, 2003, and another by a young shahidka, Mariam Tashukhadzhiyeva, in Grozny few weeks later. His successor, acting President Sergei Abramov, was targeted by yet another bombing in July 2004 which he survived.

• February 7, 2007 - Mairbek Murdagaliyev, deputy head of the Vedensky District administration, killed in a blast of an explosive device planted at the door of his house.