11 Facts About Ruslan Aushev

Ruslan Sultanovich Aushev was born on 29 October 1954 and is a Russian Ingush former politician.

Ruslan Aushev was the President of Ingushetia from March 1993 to December 2001.

Ruslan Aushev was reportedly the youngest officer in the Soviet Army to reach the rank of lieutenant general.

Ruslan Aushev was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 7 May 1982 for his actions in Afghanistan.

Ruslan Aushev was born on 29 October 1954 to an Ingush family living in Kazakhstan, who were deported from the Russian SFSR in 1944.

Ruslan Aushev entered the Soviet military in 1971 and graduated from the Ordzhonikidze Higher Combined-Arms Command School in 1975, after which he served in the North Caucasus Military District, where he rose to the position of chief of staff of a motorized rifle battalion before he was deployed to Afghanistan in 1980.

Ruslan Aushev was promoted to the rank of Major General in 1991 and to the rank of Lieutenant General in 1997.

In November 1992 Ruslan Aushev was appointed to lead the provisional administration in Ingushetia, a position he resigned two months later to run in the Ingushetian presidential elections.

President Ruslan Aushev said that his people could not forget how the same Russian armored columns "and the same Defense Minister" assisted in the destruction of Ingush settlements and the expulsion of Ingush population during the 1992 ethnic conflict in North Ossetia.

Ruslan Aushev resigned in December 2001 and on 23 May 2002, Murat Zyazikov was elected president of Ingushetia under controversial circumstances.

Ruslan Aushev served as a negotiator on the second day of the Beslan school hostage crisis, convincing the hostage-takers to release 26 nursing women and their infants.