Zelimkhan Abdulmuslimovich Yandarbiyev was a Chechen writer and politician, who served as acting president of the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria between 1996 and 1997.
14 Facts About Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev
2.
In 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was assassinated while in exile in Qatar.
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Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was originally a literary scholar, poet, and children's literature writer, having studied at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow and co-founding a clandestine literature club named Prometheus which would eventually get banned by the Soviet authorities.
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Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev later became a leader in the Chechen nationalist movement as the Soviet Union began to collapse.
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In late May 1996, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev headed a Chechen delegation that met President of Russia Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister of Russia Viktor Chernomyrdin for peace talks at the Kremlin that resulted in the signature of a ceasefire agreement on 27 May 1996.
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In 1997, during the signing of the Russian-Chechen Peace Treaty in Moscow, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev famously forced his Russian counterpart President Yeltsin to change seats at a negotiating table so he would be received like a head of sovereign state.
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Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev stood in the presidential election held in Chechnya in February 1997, but was defeated by the Chechen separatist top military leader, General Aslan Maskhadov, getting 10 per cent of the votes and landing third behind Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev.
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Together with Maskhadov, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev took part in signing of the "lasting" peace treaty in Moscow.
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In September 1998, Maskhadov publicly denounced Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, accusing him of importing the Islamic extremist philosophy of "Wahhabism" and of being responsible for "anti-state activities" including anti-government speeches and public meetings, as well as the organisation of illegal armed groups.
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Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev subsequently joined forces with the hard-line Islamist opposition to Maskhadov's rule.
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At the beginning of the Second Chechen War, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev traveled abroad to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and eventually settled in Qatar in 1999, where he sought to obtain Muslim support for the Chechen cause.
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Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev played a key role in directing funding from foundations in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf in order to support a radical Chechen faction dubbed the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment, a militant group responsible for the Moscow theater hostage crisis.
13.
On 13 February 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was killed when a bomb ripped through his SUV in the Qatari capital, Doha.
14.
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was fatally wounded and succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital.