The authorities of the Ukrainian capital have commemorated the heroes of Chechnya and Dagestan
In Kyiv, the city council decided to rename a park and a street – Imam Shamil and the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, respectively. The deputies cited solidarity with the fight against Russian troops as the reason for this decision.
Sheikh Mansur is an 18th-century leader of the Caucasian highlanders, after whom a Ukrainian battalion composed of Chechen émigrés has been named, fighting in the Donbas since 2014.
Imam Shamil, the leader of the 19th-century North Caucasian liberation movement, is now commemorated by the name of a park in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district. The renaming initiative was put forward by the All-Ukrainian Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan, led by Akhmad Akhmedov, who fights in the Imam Shamil Battalion on the Ukrainian side. In Russia, Akhmedov is accused of treason and terrorism. MP Volodymyr Bondarenko emphasized that Imam Shamil, like today's Ukraine, fought against Russian invaders, and renaming the square is a symbol of respect for his quest for freedom.
In 2024, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Ivano-Frankivsk in memory of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the first president of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Furthermore, streets named after Ichkeria's leaders exist in the cities of Izyum and Kryvyi Rih. In Kyiv, Groznenskaya Street was renamed Ichkeria Street in 2022.
