Address by President Maskhadov to the people

Address to the Chechen People by President of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Aslan Maskhadov

Dear compatriots, brothers and sisters!

It has been nine years since criminal Russian leadership disdained the international law and all its norms and laws and committed a direct military aggression against the independent Chechen State. The nuclear superpower attacked the Chechen nation (with the population of 1 million) with all its might in order to bring it back into the colonial stall. This war is not our choice, it is not our goal. It was imposed on us by the power structures that are trying to solve their own political and other problems with blood and sufferings of the people.

It has been nine years since in the difficult conditions and virtually with no support from the outside the Chechen people have been conducting the holy struggle for freedom and independence and for the right to be the owners in the land of their forefathers.

What is happening in Chechnya now is not a war in a usual meaning of this word. Russian troops have virtually become punitive death squads that unleashed the unprecedented terror against our peaceful civilians: against women, children and the elderly. Chechen youth became the number one target for physical elimination and maiming, with no distinction being made on the political or ideological basis. The extermination of the gene pool of the Chechen nation is going on right in front of the entire world.

The Government of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI) and the Resistance Forces regret that so far we have been unable to properly protect peaceful civilians from the atrocities and outrages that the invaders are committing. But in the existing conditions only the forces of National Resistance are standing in the way of the Kremlin’s plans to get the Chechen nation physically exterminated. Only our fighters are defending the future of the Chechen people, their lives, their dignity and their right for independence, by attacking the enemy day and night and by dealing blows to these hordes of murderers and butchers.

Throughout all these years nothing has remained except for nuclear weapons that Russia did not use against the Chechen people. Russian generals themselves have admitted that millions of soldiers and officers have gone through our small country already. Up to one third of the population of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria have been physically exterminated. But the enemy has never been able to bring our people down to their knees.

Today I would like to thank Chechen people for steadfastness and perseverance, for helping our fighters and for not letting yourselves be drawn into the cynical games of the invaders and of a small bunch of despicable traitors with all kinds of 'elections' and 'referendums'.

The world is not going to be watching forever how year after year ancient and courageous nation of civilized Europe is being systematically exterminated by the aggressor suffering superiority complex. Our mission is to hold out. We will be continuing our holy struggle, and with the help of the Most High we will win it, because the truth is on our side and because we are defending our land and our freedom! Thousands of heroic sons and daughters of Ichkeria have taken up arms and are resisting the aggressor, and Russia has no power to break their spirit.

God is Great! (Allah Akbar!)

President of CRI A. Maskhadov

Chechen Press