The attack follows a string of attacks on his family, including the killings of his brothers Ruslan, in September 2008, and Sulim, in March.
“On Tuesday evening, a man came to my apartment in Moscow,” Yamadayev told Rosbalt news agency. “I asked him to enter the hall, but he took out a gun and shot me in the back.”
Yamadayev refused to say whether he was wounded but said his life was saved by the actions of the Moscow police and that the gunman was detained.
Police initially denied the attack, with a law enforcement source telling Interfax that it had “no evidence concerning someone firing a gun at Yamadayev.”
But Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee, later told Itar-Tass that police had detained a suspect accused of shooting at Yamadayev and that it was being treated as an attempted contract killing.
Sulim Yamadayev, a former commander of the Vostok battalion and an ally turned enemy of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead near his Dubai home in March in what local police described as a political killing. For a long time afterward, Isa maintained that his brother was still alive.
Ruslan Yamadayev was the leader of a Chechen militia that fought on the side of federal forces in the second war and was elected to the State Duma as a United Russia deputy in 2003. He was gunned down in broad daylight in central Moscow.
Isa Yamadayev was also an officer of the General Staff’s Intelligence Service, to which the Vostok and Zapad battalions reported. After both were transferred to Kadyrov’s control, Isa Yamadayev left Chechnya.
He told Rosbalt that the attempt to kill him was directly connected to the attack on his brothers.
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