Lithuania’s Sajudis Remembers Dudayev as 25th Anniversary of His Assassination Approaches

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 14 – Twenty-five years ago this month, Russian forces murdered Jokhar Dudayev, the president of the Chechen Republic-Ichkeria. As the exact anniversary approaches on April 21, many are likely to recall what his death meant for Chechnya and for Russia. Not surprisingly, Lithuania’s Sajudis is first out of the gate.

            Dudayev has always occupied a special place in the memories of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians because of his role in January 1991 when he saved Boris Yeltsin who had come to Tallinn to sign agreements recognizing Baltic aspirations for independence and took other actions to help them. (On those events, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/01/window-on-eurasia-when-dudayev-saved.html.)

            Today, the Vilnius Council of Sajudis released a statement as it has done on earlier anniversaries directed not just to the Chechen people but to the international community about Dudayev’s murder (sajudis.com/LTENRU/RU/20210413.htm reposted at ichkeria.at/?p=16668; cf.

windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/12/world-must-never-forget-russian-crimes.html).

            “We remember and know that President Jokhar Dudayev in 1993 visited independent Lithuania, that the widow of the president Alla Dudayeva with her children lived in Vilinius during the first and second wars in Chechnya,” the leaders of the Lithuanian independence movement say.

            We also recall that “President Dudayev in 1995 named Aminat Saiyeva to be the first ambassador of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria to the countries of the Baltic and that for many years she has lived in Vilnius.

            “All Lithuania is glad and proud that Chechnya chose the peaceful and democratic path of restoring independence. Lithuania regrets that in the course of 26 years, Russia has carried out and continues top carry out a genocide in Chechnya and that the world’s government do not stop the aggressor and that they do not sympathize with or help Chechnya which is being destroyed

            “We remember that as a result of the striving of the Chechen people to live in an Independent State, Russian militarism inflicted a strike on Chechnya where lived about 1.5 million people. Such a most cruel war has never been in present-day civilization.

            “Respected peoples of the world, try to imagine how your country would look if an enormous foreign state conducted genocide over the course of 26 years and killed about 20 percent of the pre-war population of your country. If that happened to Russia, then about 26 million people would have died.

            Because Russia wasn’t stopped in Chechnya, “we know that Moldova, Sakhartvelo and Ukraine have become victims of Rusisa; and we call attention to the fact that Ukraine is defending European democracy.

            “President Jokhar Dudayev devoted his service to international democratic ideals.”

            For that he must be honored and never forgotten, Sajudis suggests, noting that it has prepared a film about his life and work.