Appeal of Aslan Maskhadov to Chechen people

Dear compatriots, brothers and sisters!

Nine years have passed since the criminal Russian leadership scorned all the rules and norms of international law and committed direct military aggression against the independent Chechen state. One of the nuclear superpowers attacked the million-strong Chechen nation with all its forces, trying to return it under the colonial yoke. This war is not our choice and not our end in itself. It was thrust upon us by the forces that are trying to solve their political and other tasks through people's blood and suffering.

For nine years the Chechen people have been waging, in harsh conditions and practically without support from outside, a holy war for freedom and independence and for the right to be their own master on the land of their forefathers.

What is going on in Chechnya is not a war in the usual meaning of this word. The Russian troops have actually become punitive Sonderkommandos who have unleashed terror, the likes of which the world has never seen, against our civilians, women, children and elderly. Chechen youth has become the prime target for the mass extermination or mutilation that are being carried out irrespective of political or ideological affiliation. The gene pool of the Chechen nation is being openly destroyed in front of the whole world.

The leadership of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Resistance forces regret that we are still unable to properly protect the civilian population from the atrocities and arbitrariness of the invaders. However, in the current conditions only the popular Resistance forces are standing in the way of the Kremlin's plans on the physical extermination of the Chechen people. Only our fighters, carrying out strikes on the enemy day and night, on these hordes of murderers and butchers, are defending the future of the Chechen people, their lives, dignity and their right to independence.

During all these years, Russia has used every kind of weapon, except for nuclear arms, against the Chechen people. The Russian generals themselves admit that they have already used millions of soldiers and officers in our small country. They have destroyed everything that can be destroyed and burnt everything that can be burnt. Up to one third of the population of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria has been exterminated. But the enemy did not manage to bring our nation to its knees.

Today I would like to thank the Chechen people for their stamina and patience, for their support for our fighters, for not allowing themselves to be involved in the cynical games of occupiers and a bunch of despicable traitors with all sorts of "elections" and "referendums".

The world will not always indifferently look on while the overstepping aggressor is deliberately exterminating an ancient and courageous nation in civilized Europe. Our task is not to give in. We will continue our holy struggle and will win it with God's help because the truth and law are on our side and because we are fighting for our land and freedom! Thousands of heroic sons and daughters of Ichkeria have taken up arms to oppose the aggressor, and Russia has no strength to break their spirit.

Dala atto boila vain! Allahu akbar!

President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Aslan Maskhadov.