Foreword by Luke Harding Akhmed Zakaev is a symbol of the indomitable will of the Chechen nation. In this important memoir, he tells the story of the Chechen struggle as he experienced it, describing the conflict in human terms and providing a detailed documentary record of little known or badly understood events that will be of benefit to historians for generations to come. - David Satter, author of The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin. This book is about the heroic struggle of Chechens for their freedom. The Kremlin dictators (no matter what masks they choose to wear) have been guilty of a fatal blunder. Russia lavishes immense resources and military effort on keeping Chechnya under its control, but the Chechens will never be conquered. For proof of that we have only to turn to the centuries of struggle of this most freedom-loving and indomitable people. - Victor Suvorov, Author of The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II. To describe this book as an invaluable historical document would be an understatement. The story of the long Chechen struggle for independence, and of the two brutal wars unleashed on that mountain republic since the mid-1990s, has never been told by someone so close to the beating heart of events. Not only did Akhmed Zakayev experience first-hand the turmoil and tragedy of these years; he was a direct participant in many of the most decisive developments of the time. In these pages, he recounts the unfolding of these events at close quarters, giving us an unprecedented portrait of major political battles, military clashes and diplomatic summits that have all too often been described only from the Russian point of view. - Tony Wood, Author of *Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War* Subjugate or Exterminate! is an authoritative first-hand account of the Russo-Chechen conflict by a Chechen leader who played a central role in all the main events. Akhmed Zakaev rose rapidly from an actor of Shakespearean roles to Commander of the Western Group for the Defense of Ichkeria, and later served as Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya and, in exile, as Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). It describes how the Kremlin set about discrediting and destroying a democratic government by interacting with criminal gangs and fomenting Islamist forces to split the Chechen independence movement in a perverse reversal of the "War on Terror." Akhmed Zakaev's memoir begins with a historical survey of the fraught relations between the Chechens and the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, up to the collapse of the USSR. The advent of Gorbachev's Perestroika raised hopes that independence might enable Chechnya to end centuries of oppression and exploitation. Russia's first war against Chechnya (1994-1996), initially conceived by the military as a way of disguising the large-scale theft and embezzlement of funds from illegal sales of Soviet armaments during the withdrawal from East Germany, ended in humiliating defeat for Russia. Thereafter, Russia set about subverting the democratically elected government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria by instigating the gruesome murder of Western humanitarian aid workers and business partners, and by financing criminal gangs and anti-democratic Islamist groups that the ChRI police were unable to subdue. Interference by nationals of countries in the Middle East caused further disruption. In August 1999, Russia launched a brutal second war in Chechnya, on grounds widely believed to be fabricated and characterized by widespread war crimes. The West did not intervene. This is an eyewitness account of the dangers faced by the Chechen leaders as they tried to resist and negotiate with a treacherous opponent. It ends in the year 2000, with Vladimir Putin's election as Russia's president.