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Gennady Troshev

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Gennady Nikolayevich Troshev
Геннадий Николаевич Трошев
Allegiance Russia
RankColonel General
Unit58th Army
North Caucasus Military District
Battles/warsFirst Chechen War
Invasion of Dagestan (1999)
Second Chechen War
Awards Hero of Russia

Gennady Troshev (Russian: Геннадий Николаевич Трошев, 14 March 1947, Berlin – 14 September 2008, Perm) was a Colonel General in the Russian military and formerly the commander of the North Caucasus Military District, including Chechnya, during the Second Chechen War. He was awarded a Hero of Russia award.

Biography

Gennady Troshev was born in 1947 in Berlin, East Germany[1], a son of a Soviet officer. He spent his childhood in the ethnic Russian community of the Chechen-Ingush Republic's capital Grozny.[2] In 1969 he graduated from the Kazan Tank College, and later from the Tank Academy and from the Military Academy of the General Staff. After graduating from the tank college in 1969 Troshev served in Soviet tank forces. Troshev served as the commander of the 10th Urals-Lvov tank division, later - as the commander of the 42nd Army Corps. and as the commander of the joint group of federal forces in Chechnya during the First Chechen War. On June 1, 1995, Troshev was appointed commander of the 58th Army (Russia) and since July 29, 1997 he served as the deputy commander of the North Caucasus Military District. In April 2000 Troshev was appointed the commander of the joint group of federal forces in the Northern Caucasus. [3] Several suspect that the crash in which Troshev died was deliberately sabotaged to assassinate him.

During his career as a commander in Chechnya he gained notoriety after advocating public executions of separatist fighters.[4][5] Human rights activists had accused him of tolerating rampant abuses in the war-ravaged republic.[6] Early in the war he declared that the shattered city of Grozny should never be rebuilt so as to serve as a warning against "treason to Russia's ethnic minorities".[7] He also publicly defended Yuri Budanov who was on trial for the rape and murder of a 18-year-old Chechen woman Elza Kungayeva.[8]

He publicly defied, on national television, Minister of Defense Sergi Ivanov's suggestion that Troshev should relocate from Chechnya (the North Caucasus Military District) to the command of the Siberian Military District. Due to this act, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree dismissing Troshev from his post in 2002.[1]

The Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. policy research organisation that studies Russian military affairs, said Ivanov's order that Troshev relocate to Siberia was "open to multiple and complex interpretations. One theory connects it to a broader reshuffling of personnel as major elections approach in Chechnya (and perhaps in response to the Moscow theater hostage crisis). A second explanation ties it to the stalled process of military-administrative reform."

Troshev was an advisor to the President of the Russian Federation for Cossacks affairs.

He died in the Aeroflot-Nord Flight 821 crash on September 14, 2008. Several suspect that the crash in which Troshev died was deliberately sabotaged to assassinate him.[9]

References