Adam Osmayev (1981-) was the commander of the Dudayev Battalion from 2014, succeeding Isa Munayev.
Biography[]
Adam Osmayev was born in Chechen-Ingush ASSR, Soviet Union, but he was sent to a prestigious boarding school in the Cotswolds region of Gloucestershire, England in 1994 by his father Aslanbek, a high-ranking communist official. He attended Wycliffe College, and he was known for drinking vodka with his Russian and Chechen friends and chasing girls, showing no religious zeal as a Muslim. He prayed only when an imam occasionally visited the school, and there were no signs that he would become a person on a quest to fight Russia. When pro-Russian President of Chechnya Akhmad Kadyrov was assassinated, Aslanbek Osmayev was sidelined and no longer led the major oil company that he once owned, and Adam was charged with attempting to assassinate Ramzan Kadyrov, Akhmad's son and successor. In addition, he was twice charged with attempting to kill Vladimir Putin, and he was later released from prison in Odessa after Ukrainian authorities and his wife campaigned to have the charges dropped. Osmayev joined the Dudayev Battalion, a volunteer unit of Chechens fighting in the Donbass War alongside the government of Ukraine against the pro-Russian militants and the Russian Army, and he appeared in a VICE News interview with Simon Ostrovsky, showing him his unit in action. He took over the Dudayev Battalion after its leader Isa Munayev was killed in action. On 31 October 2017, as Osmayev and his wife returned to their house outside Kiev, gunmen with AK-47 assault rifles opened fire on their car, wounding Osmayev and killing his wife.