Yeltsin and Dudayev winners of War AwardTwo former presidents were recently announced as the winners of the War Award competition: Boris Yeltsin of Russia, and the late Jokhar Dudayev of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
These two politicians garnered the most votes for having “contributed the most” to the beginning of the war in Chechnya (1994-2004).
The runners up were journalist Mikhail Leontyev, and President Vladimir Putin, both of Russia; and Akhmad Kadyrov, the late leader of the Chechen republic, and Shamil Basayev, a Chechen field commander.
The Organizing Committee received a total of 216 nominations, which were then sent to the editor of the Chechen Society newspaper. Nominations were also collected by the employees of the Social Development Institute of Timur Aliyev that initiated the War Award competition.
The final selections were made by a five-man jury representing Russia, the Chechen Republic, Caucasus, Europe and the USA.
"Dudayev and Yeltsin deserve this award since both politicians deliberately started the war in order to hold onto their power. All the others were simply a byproduct of the situation these two created," explained Edilbeg Khasmagomadov, a historian and political scientist representing Chechnya.
However, the jury, to some extent, felt that Mikhail Leontyev, Akhmat Kadyrov, Vladimir Putin and Shamil Basayev should have also received the award, although for different reasons.
For example, in the opinion of Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, “Both Kadyrov and Leontyev, who won the silver awards, deserve top prize as well even though, as a rule, heads of states are automatically responsible for the onset of wars. But the biggest guilt must fall on puppets like Kadyrov and propagandists like Leontyev. Incidentally, we really shouldn’t be calling Leontyev a journalist; he is actually one of the Kremlin’s main megaphones for supporting the war in Chechnya."
And then there is David Petrosyan, political analyst from Armenia who represented the Caucasus on the jury, who believes that, “Mikhail Leontyev is one of those people who form public opinion; and since he’s been doing it for a long time, he deserves some credit for it. When he calls for war, he means it with every fiber of his being. He’s a definite danger to peace.”
Meanwhile, the bronze winner Shamil Basayev, "represents an irreconcilable faction in the Chechen armed resistance having played a really outstanding role in forming a negative image of it. According to the international community, he reduced resistance to terrorism. Basayev, in my opinion, is one of those who turned the 1999 peace agreement into a worthless scrap of a paper. In fact, his intrusion into Dagestan was the end of Khasavyurt. And thanks to him, the second Chechen war began and is still ongoing,” said Petrosyan.
The Organizing Committee would like to remind everyone that the winners won 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.
Prizes can be picked up at the following address: Mutaliyeva Street 52, Nazran.
The Organizing Committee of the War Award Competition.
iorta@hotbox.ru (S/E,T)
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