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Controversial Ex-Russian Commander In Chechnya Elected Governor
MOSCOW (AFP) - Vladimir Shamanov, a top former commander of Russian forces in Chechnya accused of failing to prevent human rights abuses, has been elected governor of the Ulyanovsk region, preliminary results showed Monday.
Shamanov took 56.21% of votes in the region in Russia's Volga, compared to 23.57% for the incumbent communist governor, Yury Goryachev, RIA-Novosti news agency cited the electoral commission as saying.
"We have to wait another 24 hours before the results are announced but the gap is so wide between me and my rival, who we can start calling the ex-governor, that nothing can affect the outcome," a triumphant Shamanov said on public RTR television.
"I don't intend to please everybody. I intend to guarantee Russian laws and humanitarian values," said the general, whose campaign was strongly backed by the Kremlin.
Shamanov was one of three Russian generals in charge of a federal crackdown against separatists in breakaway Chechnya launched on October 1, 1999, now nearly into its 15th month.
He was removed from duty last January following allegations he turned a blind eye to the massacre of civilians in a Chechen village southwest of Grozny. But officially he quit his job for reasons related to ill health.
In December, prominent pro-Moscow Chechen Malik Saidullayev led Western journalists to the scene of a reported massacre by drunken Russian soldiers of several dozen civilians in his hometown of Alkhan-Yurt, prompting international outrage.
In an interview with AFP in January, Saidullayev, a 35-year-old entrepreneur who harbored hopes of governing the separatist Chechen republic in Moscow's name, accused Shamanov of allowing his soldiers to run amok.
In the western front under Shamanov's command, "they make no effort to reach agreement with the local population and they have been wiping them out," he then said.
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