SLEPTSOVSK, Southern Russia -- The wife of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov has chosen to stay on enemy territory to be closer to her people while her husband leads the battle against Russian troops in the breakaway republic.
Kusama Maskhadov, a shy woman in her 40s whose blonde hair is tinged with a touch of silver, spoke to Reuters in Ingushetia on Sunday. She said she shared her husband's struggle to avert what she called the genocide of the Chechens.
"I move freely, I live where I want to live and I am under no one's supervision other than God's," Kusama Maskhadov said in a tent on the fringes of a refugee camp near Sleptsovsk, just over the Chechen border.
A month ago Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has since become acting president, caused a stir by announcing that Maskhadov's family was on Russian territory and being protected by the country's secret services.
Putin said Kusama Maskhadov and other family members had been taken to an undisclosed location away from Ingushetia, a region that has provided refuge for more than 200,000 people fleeing the conflict.
But on Sunday, she was at the refugee camp in Sleptsovsk, watching a small anti-war rally quietly from a large white jeep. She was accompanied by one Chechen man and two women, with no security guards in evidence.
An interview was conducted under some secrecy.
"I live with refugees, but not in this camp," Kusama said. "I could leave if I chose, but I don't want to. I want to stay with my people." Kusama, who wore a black coat and head scarf, said her grown-up daughter was living with her but not her son.
She said she was in fairly regular contact with her husband and fully supported his cause. "We are often in contact. Sometimes once in a month, sometimes twice."
Kusama denied a report by the Russian military that the Chechen president had been wounded, saying she had spoken to him after the report. "He is alive and well," she said. "He is in good spirits. They all feel like that."
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