{"id":6119,"date":"2015-03-01T07:57:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T12:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6119"},"modified":"2015-03-01T07:57:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T12:57:27","slug":"isa-munayevs-war-the-final-days-of-a-chechen-commander-fighting-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6119","title":{"rendered":"ISA MUNAYEV\u2019S WAR THE FINAL DAYS OF A CHECHEN COMMANDER FIGHTING IN UKRAINE"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/02\/27\/isa-munayevs-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">ISA MUNAYEV\u2019S WAR<\/a><\/h3>\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/02\/27\/isa-munayevs-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">THE FINAL DAYS OF A CHECHEN COMMANDER FIGHTING IN UKRAINE<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span><strong>N SEPTEMBER OF\u00a0<\/strong>2014, I found myself standing on a narrow, potholed street in Kiev, east of the Dnieper River, in an area known as the Left Bank. I didn\u2019t even know, at that point, whom I was meeting. I knew only that Khalid, my contact in Turkey with the Islamic State, had told me his \u201cbrothers\u201d were in Ukraine, and I could trust them.<\/p>\n<p>When one of them called me, I was given the address of a small street in the Ukrainian capital where I should go, and no other information. When I arrived, I found myself in a maze of Soviet apartment blocks. I immediately noticed two well-built men walking by; they were bearded, with black sunglasses and black leather jackets. When I looked closely, I could see sticking out of their jackets the barrels of small machine guns.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKandahar, Kandahar,\u201d one of them said into his radio, after approaching me.<\/p>\n<p>Could we go in? \u201cNo,\u201d was the answer. The \u201ccommander\u201d was still busy.<\/p>\n<p>The armed men guided me past rows of Soviet-era apartment buildings, and then we waited in a wide, open square among the tall, concrete buildings. After half an hour of waiting, we wove through the housing complex until we approached a 10-story building, then took the elevator up to a mid-level floor and entered a small apartment. The single room was furnished with a bed, a kitchen table and two chairs.<\/p>\n<p>Sitting inside the small apartment was Isa Munayev. I recognized him immediately, because he was one of the few Chechens serving in Ukraine who was photographed frequently without a mask. He was upset, and shouting into the phone: \u201cWe came to die for you, and you don\u2019t even want to do what you promised.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISA MUNAYEV\u2019S WAR THE FINAL DAYS OF A CHECHEN COMMANDER FIGHTING IN UKRAINE IN SEPTEMBER OF\u00a02014, I found myself standing on a narrow, potholed street in Kiev, east of the Dnieper River, in an area known as the Left Bank. I didn\u2019t even know, at that point, whom I was meeting. I knew only that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3852,3851,1610,694,821],"class_list":["post-6119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-chechen","tag-isa-munayev","tag-kiev","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6120,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions\/6120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}