Dzhokhar Dudayev (15 February 1944 – 21 April 1996) was a Chechen politician, statesman, and military leader of the 1990s Chechen independence movement from Russia. He served as the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from 1991 until his assassination in 1996. Dudayev had previously served as a senior officer in the Soviet Air Forces. Dudayev was born in Chechnya in 1944, days before his family and the entire Chechen nation were deported to Central Asia by the Soviet regime in the Chechen genocide as part of an ethnic cleansing program that affected several million members of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and 1950s… On 21 April 1996, while using a satellite phone, Dudayev was assassinated by two laser-guided missiles, after his location was detected by a Russian reconnaissance aircraft, which intercepted his phone call. At the time, Dudayev was talking to Konstantin Borovoy, a deputy of the State Duma in Moscow.
Leo Tolstoy on How Chechens viewed Russians a couple centuries ago >
