Akhmed Zakayev, arrested in Denmark on Wednesday and accused by Russia over the Moscow theatre siege, is a Soviet-trained actor who played a leading role in the war to oust Russian troops from Chechnya in 1996. Zakayev was on a Russian request which stated that Zakayev was suspected of helping prepare the Moscow theatre hostage crisis last week. Akhmed had swapped the Grozny stage for the theatre of war in the Caucasus mountains after President Yeltsin’s tank columns blasted their way into Grozny in December 1994. His striking, bearded features, topped by a green bandana bearing Koranic script in Arabic, became a familiar media presence, first as a charismatic guerrilla commander and then as a peace negotiator. Zakayev, now 43, took part in talks with Yeltsin in 1996 that led to a truce and a deal to discuss Chechen independence in 2001. By last year, however, he was wounded in the second Chechen war, launched by Vladimir Putin in 1999. In November 2001, Zakayev, now an envoy of Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, met an envoy of President Putin at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport — the only face-to-face contact in three years of war. If Denmark accedes to Russia’s extradition demands — and it is not clear it will, given Zakayev’s denials and condemnation of the theatre raid — his next meeting may be less comfortable. He will argue, however, that he and Maskhadov are Moscow’s best hope of peace in the Muslim region and has warned that radical factions could hit new targets if Kremlin does not start talking. ‘‘We are ready to move from the military fight to political means of solving the conflict,’’ Zakayev said. ‘‘But if the Russian military leadership expects our capitulation, this will not happen. Never. We have means to continue our struggle for as long as it will be needed, five, 10, 15 years.’’
