Aged 50 he was the former police chief of de facto independent Chechnya in the 1990s

This is an excerpt from an article that originally appeared at The New Great Game

Veteran Chechen Commander Killed Fighting in Ukraine



Prominent Chechen commander Isa Munayev has reportedly been killed in eastern Ukraine, where he was battling alongside Kiev government troops against pro-Moscow separatists.



Munayev — a veteran of Chechnya's wars for independence from Russia — was killed Sunday near the town of Debaltseve, said Amina Okuyeva, a press officer for the Dzhokhar Dudayev peacekeeping battalion, which Munayev commanded.



He was providing cover for Kiev-loyal forces that were withdrawing after "successfully completing a mission" when he was killed by artillery fire, Okuyeva said Monday in a statement posted on the Odessa Crisis Media Center website.

During the Second Chechen War, Isa Munayev was the military commandant of Grozny and head of the Interior Ministry of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria under Aslan Maskhadov.

After the "Chechen rebels" had been largely defeated, Munayev fled to Denmark, where he lived for a couple of years before coming to Ukraine to stop the "moskals."

To this end, Munayev formed the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, which consists of Chechens, Russians, Ukrainian and Georgians. The Kiev regime depicted him as a hero and mourned his death, whereas Chechen President Kadyrov insisted that Munayev never was a warrior or a real man.

Furthermore, Kadyrov made the ludicrous claim that Munayev's close associates Adam Osmayev and Amina Okueva had organized his murder on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the CIA after the intelligence agencies realized "that Munayev is not worth even a devalued hryvnia."

Adam Osmayev, who succeeded Munayev as head of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, has an interesting history as well: