Final nominees selected for the War AwardThe Chechen nominees for the War Award for the "best contribution" to the war in Chechnya are: Akhmat Kadyrov, Jokhar Dudayev, and Shamil Basayev; and the Russian ones are: Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Leontyev.
About 216 nominations were either sent via e-mail to the organizing committee or to the editors of the Chechen Society, or were personally collected by committee employees from among the Chechen populace.
The highest number of votes for Chechens went to Akhmat Kadyrov, the late Moscow-backed leader of the republic; Jokhar Dudayev, the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria; and Shamil Basayev, a field commander. And of the Russians, they were Boris Yeltsin, former Russian president; Vladimir Putin, the current president; and Mikhail Leontyev, a journalist.
Ruslan Khasbulatov, Sergei Shakhraj, and Pavel Grachev, along with the "Soviet system" and the "entire Russian society", were also nominated.
The final selections will be made by an international jury of five people from Russia, the Chechen Republic, Caucasus, Europe and the USA.
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The War Award competition, which was started by The Social Development Institute of Timur Aliyev on March 22, is essentially an “anti-prize” that will be awarded to either a politician or public figure who “contributed the most” to the onset and continuation of the war in the Chechen Republic (1994-2004).
This event is aimed at attracting the attention of the international and Russian community to the military actions in the Chechen Republic that have now been ongoing for 10 years. The organizers are accepting world-wide nominations from the public for two people, one Chechen and one non-Chechen.
The winners will receive an honorable certificate, a yearly subscription to The Chechen Society newspaper and an all-expense-paid three day trip to the Chechen Republic to visit the areas where military operations had taken place.
Nominations may be submitted to the organizer's e-mail address iorta@hotbox.ru; to the website of the Committee of Non-Governmental Organizations; or the editor’s offices of The Chechen Society and The Voice of the Chechen Republic.
The War Award Committee (iorta@hotbox.ru)
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