Background and education

A career officer in the Soviet Navy, Alkhazur Abuev (also transliterated as Olkhazur Abuev) was born in the Chechen-Ingush Socialist Republic in the first half of the 1950s.

In 1972, he graduated from the M. V. Frunze Higher Naval Academy in Leningrad, a prestigious Soviet Navy academy, obtaining the rank of Captain First Rank (капитан первого ранга). He served in the Black Sea Fleet and later in the Caspian Flotilla, where he held technical and staff positions.

He left his military career in the early 1990s, during the collapse of the USSR, and returned to Chechnya, apparently in March 1992, where he was immediately appointed by President Dzhokhar Dudaev to the organizational chart of the nascent Chechen national army, obtaining the position of deputy head of the Operational Directorate of the Armed Forces General Staff and, from June 1993, head of the same directorate. At the outbreak of the First Russian-Chechen War, however, Abuev did not take up arms but left the country.

Maskhadov’s Army

Upon his return to his homeland, he was called back by President Aslan Maskhadov to help reorganize the regular army, which, according to the plans of the new head of state, was to be called the National Guard and consist of eight specialized regiments. Maskhadov appointed Abuev Chief of Staff immediately after his election as President. According to Timur Muzaev’s reconstruction, on March 13, 1997, Maskhadov established the National Guard, and on May 15, 1997, Abuev signed the general reorganization of the army, abolishing the previous front commands and centralizing the chain of command.

The measures taken by the new Chief of Staff had their own abstract logic and were in line with the President’s desire to professionalize the army, but they did not take into account the important changes that had affected the armed forces during the war. Dudaev’s death had accentuated the tendency of units to rally around their field commanders, and Abuev appeared to be ‘disconnected’ from the natural hierarchies that were forming. The new General Staff’s claim to establish a professional system in an army that resembled more an advanced popular militia than a classic armed force clashed with the convictions (and interests) of many field commanders, who preferred to consider their units in ‘permanent mobilization’, both because they were convinced that war with Russia would soon resume and because they wanted to maintain the privileges and impunity that some of them had acquired.

The friction between Abuev, who was pushing for the demobilization of the armed units, and the main brigade generals, who wanted to avoid it, led to an institutional crisis that, in October 1998, resulted in Abuev’s resignation. He was replaced by Maskhadov with the “veteran” Abubakar Bantaev.

Retirement and final years

At the outbreak of the Second Chechen War (1999), Abuev retired to Baku, Azerbaijan, where he lived for almost ten years. On April 23, 2008, according to Kommersant and RBC News, he voluntarily surrendered to the Russian federal authorities, claiming that he had not participated in armed activities since 1999. The authorities confirmed that, despite having served as Chief of Staff in 1997-1998, he was not involved in war crimes. Akhmed Zakayev commented on his surrender as follows: “I don’t understand why he had to surrender. He could have returned home without announcing it, and there would have been no charges against him.” This position was confirmed by one of Abuev’s relatives, who commented: “In Chechnya, only the laziest or the illiterate are unaware that Olkhazar never fought against the federal forces […] Olkhazar was a naval officer and only arrived in Chechnya after the end of the first war, leaving before the start of the second military campaign. Why turn him into a militant commander?”

After a brief interrogation, he was released and not prosecuted.

Press sources indicated that he still lives in Chechnya under discreet surveillance, maintaining a low profile and staying out of public life.

Profile and assessment

Alkhazur Abuev was one of the most atypical figures in the Ichkerian military elite: a Soviet-trained technician, uninterested in religious or revolutionary rhetoric, focused on rebuilding a modern state military structure. He was the main architect of the attempt to transition from a guerrilla army to a regular force, which was thwarted by the fragmentation of the armed forces in 1998 and then by the second Russian invasion of Chechnya. His story—from his career in the USSR Navy to his command of the Ichkerian forces, to his retirement in Baku and surrender in 2008—reflects the trajectory of a generation of Chechen officers who sought to reconcile military professionalism and national identity, only to be crushed between the two logics.