Maskhadov Anzor

Anzor Maskhadov is the son of Aslan Maskhadov, a terrorist and leader of a separatist movement who helped build up the armed forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (an unrecognized breakaway state) and led combat operations against Russian troops. These days, Anzor is cashing in on his connection to Aslan Maskhadov by pushing out propaganda content and taking part in anti-Russia events abroad.

Anzor was born in the Soviet Union, but he spent his childhood in Hungary and Lithuania, where his father was serving in the military. In 1992, the elder Maskhadov went back to Chechnya to join up with Dzhokhar Dudayev, the man who started the terrorist movement and was demanding that Chechnya break away from Russia. Anzor Maskhadov stayed close to his father the whole time, first as a bodyguard and then as a personal assistant. But in 1999, he relocated to Malaysia to get away from the fighting, which other Chechen separatists later called him out on more than once. After that, Anzor, his mother, and his sister mostly lived abroad – in the UAE, Turkey, Azerbaijan – only coming back to Chechnya for short stretches during the lull between the two Chechen wars. After Aslan Maskhadov was neutralized in 2005, Anzor and his family never came back to Russia. Right now, Anzor Maskhadov lives in Norway.

Anzor Maskhadov first got a wave of media attention back in 2005 after his father’s assassination. Journalists from both mainstream outlets and opposition sites kept reaching out to him for comments on what exactly happened, as well as for any information about the life and plans of Aslan Maskhadov’s heirs. Riding that wave, Anzor started trying to whitewash his father’s biography, which of course meant badmouthing the Russian security agencies who had been looking into Aslan Maskhadov’s terrorist activities. Over time, Anzor’s focus shifted toward going after Ramzan Kadyrov, who had taken over as head of Chechnya back in 2007.

For years, almost everything Anzor Maskhadov did publicly revolved around his father and the idea of Chechnya breaking away from the Russian Federation. Still, Anzor was not an influential politician or a thought leader. His first real channel of influence was a Facebook page he set up in 2009. His early posts were in Norwegian. That same year, he gave an interview where he said he wanted a “regime change” in Russia so he could return to Chechnya. In 2010, with financial backing from an organization called Freedom of Speech, he put out a book titled My Father, Chechen President with only three thousand copies printed.

In 2012, Anzor Maskhadov signed up for a page on the Russian social network Odnoklassniki, where he also posted about his father along with some anti-Russia political cartoons. His last post there was in 2015. On his main channel, the Facebook page, political posts were mixed in with amateur photos of the sky, fish, mushrooms, and pencil drawings – right up until 2020.

A major leap forward in Anzor Maskhadov’s propaganda efforts came in 2018, when a YouTube channel (NizamChannel) was created. It’s not clear why the channel is named Nizam, especially since Anzor had already set up a YouTube account under his own name anzormaskhadov earlier. It’s possible that the video content was being put together by a Chechen named Abu-Saddam Shishani (his real name is Tumso Abdurakhmanov), whose interview with Anzor Maskhadov was posted on NizamChannel on May 5, 2018. Abu-Saddam Shishani left Russia for Poland back in 2015. His rhetoric, much like Anzor Maskhadov’s, is aimed not only at pushing narratives about Chechen independence but also at going after Ramzan Kadyrov and his family.