Op-Ed: Is Russia assassinating its political opponents from Chechnya?

The Russian bear is back and is flexing its muscles as only it can. For those who thought that Russia was about to go into hibernation after the Cold War was over, the events of the last nine months have shown that the opposite is true.

The big Russian bear is beginning to flex its muscles like it was the Cold War all over again. After defeating the American-backed Georgian army in South Ossetia last August, Russia has begun to reassert itself as a major power in the world. Not content with flying its bombers close to both British and Canadian airspace, making a claim to the Arctic, and threatening to stop gas supplies to Western Europe, it now seems that the Russian Federation is behind the targeted assassination of political opponents both inside and outside the borders of the country. A lot of the assassinations relate to the situation in Chechnya, where the President, Ramzan Kadyrov, is heavily backed by Russia. The latest killing was that of Sulim Yamadayev, a leading rival of Mr Kadyrov, who was shot dead in Dubai on Saturday, March 28th, 2009. Six months before, Mr Yamadayev's brother, Ruslan, was murdered outside the British embassy in central Moscow. In the past six months alone, three of Mr Kadyrov's opponents have been killed in separate incidents in Istanbul: Gaji Edilsultanov, a Chechen rebel army colonel; Islam Zhanibekov, a former Chechen rebel field commander; and Musa Atayev. A fourth, Umar Ismailov, was killed in Vienna in mid-January. He was a former bodyguard of Kadyrov and had publicly accused him of ordering torture and murders. The international nature of the killings and their clinical efficiency make some observers believe that they were ordered, if not carried out, by the FSB – the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation – that was once run by Vladimir Putin. Until last year, Mr Yamadayev was Chechnya's second most powerful warlord after Mr Kadyrov. They fought together against the Russians in the 1994-1996 war and then switched sides in 1999. Mr Yamadayev lost out in an internal struggle with Mr Kadyrov and had to settle for a position as head of the Chechen Vostok battalion with his power base being Gudermes, Chechnya's second biggest city.