At the end of January 2000, Russian federal forces had secured almost complete control over Grozny, the capital of the Chechen republic. Fighting had been intense for several months, since the onset of the Second Chechen War in the fall of 1999. The separatist forces were withdrawing to the foothills and southern mountains, and large-scale military operations and bombardments ceased in the city.
On February 1, 2000, Zura Bisultanova (37), Larisa Makuyeva (32) and Aset Tatsakhova (23) went to Grozny to check their apartments and the property left there. All three women were from Samashki, in the Achkhoy-Martan district. Alpatu X – (surname redacted for ethical reasons) – a fourth woman was with them. In the Staropromyslovsky district of the city, on Zhigulevskaya Street near house No. 8, the women were stopped by Russian soldiers from the Ministry of International Affairs.
The military personnel checked and returned the passport of one of the women and then turned to the others. It turned out that Alpatu did not have any documents with her. She explained that she left her documents in the apartment and went towards a nearby house, followed by military armed with weapons. Zura Bisultanova, Larisa Makuyeva and Aset Tatsakhova, surrounded by other military personnel, stayed and waited for her return.
As it become known afterwards, when Alpatu went to the house, she managed to escape from her military escort. Enraged by this fact, the soldiers seized Zura Bisultanova, Larisa Makuyeva and Aset Tatsakhova and pushed them into an armored personnel carrier. Residents of nearby houses tried to stand up for their neighbors, but they were forced to retreat when the soldiers started shooting at their feet. The Armed Personell Carrier drove in the direction of Salt Balka, an area outside the village of Katayama in the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny. At that time, one of the units of the 21st Sofrino brigade was already stationed there.
It was about four in the afternoon.
According to eyewitnesses, after some time the Russian military returned to the post. They led Zura Bisultanova in front of them and entered the houses, apparently looking for the woman who had escaped. In one of the basements near house number 173, they found civilians who were hiding. The soldiers threw grenades into the basement, and 12 people were killed. Among the dead were two small children, three women and seven men of different ages.
In 2000, a resident of Chechnya, who was released from the Chernokozovo filtration camp, and who later died from beatings and torture, informed that three women from Samashki were kept in custody together with him. Later, an anonymous note with the names of these three women was handed over to the relatives. Judging by it, the women continued to be kept in Chernokozovo.
In the search for the kidnapped women, their relatives turned to local law enforcement agencies. Due to the tense situation in Chechnya, the possibilities of conducting a search for the women were limited. Hostilities continued between the army and security forces of Russia on the one hand and Chechen armed formations on the other. Roads were blocked by checkpoints, while settlements were regularly cordoned off during sweep operations (known as zachistka). Under these circumstances it was impossible to search for the disappeared women on a systematic basis.
Nevertheless, the relatives of Zura Bisultanova, Larisa Makuyeva and Aset Tatsakhova sent numerous applications and requests to the prosecutor’s office, the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the republican and federal level, however to no avail. The information that the women were kept in “Chernokozovo” was not confirmed either.
On July 28, 2000, the Grozny city prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case into the abduction and disappearance of these women. Exactly two months later, the case was suspended due to the alleged impossibility of identifying persons responsible for the crime.
Zura Bisultanova was the mother of three small children, Larisa Makuyeva was a mother of two. Aset Tatsakhova’s child was left in the care of Aset’s relatives, after her disappearance. As of the beginning of 2022, these women are still in the list of residents Chechnya who disappeared after they had been detained by the federal forces. Their relatives are still looking for them, and searching for closure – as are a large number of other Chechen families.
Dozens of documents from various sources containing information about these women are stored in the Database of the Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center (NEDC). In total, the Database counts 80 915 profiles of victims of various violations (murders, abductions, torture, convictions on trumped-up charges, robberies, etc.) related mostly to the second Russian-Chechen armed conflict. Some of them can be found on the NEDC’s website here.