Vladimir Shamanov

Vladimir Shamanov (Владимир Анатольевич Шаманов, born 1957) was a Major General in the Russian Army and former governor of the Ulyanovsk region of Russian Federation.

Shamanov has been criticized by human rights groups for failing to control his troops in military actions during the Second Chechen War. Shamanov was removed from duty in January 2000, quoting health reasons, and for a period he was a civilian politician.

As for 2007, General-Lieutenant Vladimir Shamanov is counselor to Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, and Co-chairman of the U.S - Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (USRJC) which seeks to determine the fates of US personnel who remain unaccounted-for from WWII, the Cold War Era, the Korean War and the Second Indochina War (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).

War crimes accusations

Already during the First Chechen War, the Chechens called Shamanov the "second Yermolov", alluding to the Russian general infamous of his brutality during the Caucasian War. [1]

In December 1999 Shamanov was awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation title for actions around the village of Alkhan-Yurt earlier this month. However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) have asked the Russian government to open an investigation into the incident, which HRW has declared a "massacre." [2]

Shamanov was reported as threatening to shoot villagers who pleaded with him to halt the 'cleansing operation.' Later, he dismissed calls for accountability for the abuses: "Don't you dare touch the soldiers and officers of the Russian army. They are doing a sacred thing today - they are defending Russia. And don't you dare sully the Russian soldier with your dirty hands!," he said.

In a Novaya Gazeta interview published on June 19, 2000, Shamanov said he viewed his image as a "cruel general" as a complement and that he believed the wives and children of rebel fighters to also be "bandits" who needed to be "destroyed". At the same time, he denied the accusations of human rights violations in the foreign media. In the March 29 2004 Washington Post interview Shamanov rejected the allegations as "fairy tales" and suggested that human rights groups had planted the bodies in Alkhan-Yurt and fabricated a slaughter.

Support for war criminal Budanov

In March 2000, Shamanov, who was a war crimes suspect Budanov's commanding officer, exhibited strong sympathy towards him. Budanov, Shamanov trumpeted, was one of his "best commanders" and offered this challenge: "To [Budanov's] enemies I say: Don't put your paws on the image of a Russian soldier and officer." [3]

Later, Shamanov came to Rostov-on-the-Don to defend Budanov during trial and expressed his solidarity with defendant. Ultimately, Budanov was convicted for the March 2000 kidnapping and murder of the young Chechen woman Elza Kungaeva. On September 21, 2004, Shamanov, now the Ulyanovsk regional governor, backed a pardon for Yury Budanov, sparking anger in Chechnya even among the pro-Moscow locals. [4]

George W. Bush meeting scandal

The White House said that U.S. President George W. Bush was not aware of the allegations against Gen. Shamanov before their March 2007 meeting, which was criticised by human rights groups, and that it is "unlikely" that Bush would have meet and pose to photo with Shamanov if he had been aware of the allegations. [5]

"This isn't someone the U.S. president should be meeting with. This is someone the president should be calling for an investigation of," HRW commented.

In an open letter to Bush, signed by the heads of more than 20 Russian NGOs including Memorial and Moscow Helsinki Group, the Russian human rights defenders said:

In the course of the second Chechnya war, from fall 1999 to the present, the name of General Shamanov, commander of the Western Group of Russian Federal Troops, became symbolic of grave and massive human rights violations. In the beginning of the armed conflict, he attempted to prevent the civilian population of Chechnya from leaving the zone of fighting. Particularly infamous are the following crimes perpetrated in the territory, which Shamanov was in charge of: aerial attack on the column of refugees near the village of Shaami-Yurt on October 29, 1999; killings of civilians in the village of Alkhan-Yurt in December 1999; and shelling and bombing of peaceful residents in the officially proclaimed "safety zone" of the Katyr-Yurt village on February 4, 2000. In connection with two of those cases, the European Court on Human Rights delivered judgments, which inter alia stipulated for the invalidation of the decision of the Russian prosecutor's office to close the investigation into the said actions.

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