ESTONIA: Some Chechen rebels are remembered fondly... far from their native land, as Daniel McLaughlin found recently in Tartu, Estonia
This sleepy university town feels far removed from Russia's dirty war in Chechnya, where pro-Moscow leader Mr Akhmad Kadyrov was assassinated on Sunday. But his killing stirred Estonian memories of the life and death of a peculiar local hero, a Chechen rebel chief who loathed the Kremlin's men and defeated them in a 1994-96 war.
Gen Dzhokhar Dudayev, a firebrand whom Russia deemed its public enemy number one, is remembered with respect and gratitude in the leafy streets of Tartu for ignoring Kremlin orders to crush pro-independence demonstrators when he was a Soviet air force general here from 1987-91.
The airbase is deserted now, and its long-range bombers have long since flown east. NATO fighters now patrol Estonia's skies, since the little Baltic nation joined the military alliance in April. European Union membership followed on May 1st.
But eight years after his own assassination, Gen Dudayev still lingers in the minds of locals who laud his willingness to defy Moscow, and in a building in the historic heart of Tartu where he commanded some 4,000 men.
At the entrance to what is now the Barclay Hotel, a plaque pays quiet respects to its former tenant: "The first president of the Chechen republic Ichkeria, General Dzhokhar Dudayev, worked in this house from 1987 to 1991."
Estonia was one of the first nations to support the drive for independence in Chechnya - or Ichkeria in Chechen - and deplore the Russian onslaught of 1994-96 that ended in rebel victory and three years of self-rule, before then president Boris Yeltsin and his prime minister, Mr Vladimir Putin, returned troops to the region in 1999.
Many Estonians are proud their independence movement emboldened Gen Dudayev in his hopes for Chechnya, and recall how he let pro-democracy marchers parade across his airfield and unfurl an Estonian flag, despite Moscow's outrage. He is even said to have dispatched a mobile military kitchen to give the demonstrators hot tea.
Across the border in Russia, the dapper general is remembered with less affection - usually as little more than a gangster.
President Yeltsin, busy consolidating his own power in Russia, did nothing to oppose Gen Dudayev until 1994, when the Kremlin accused him of harbouring terrorists in Chechnya, and supported a series of coups that failed to oust him.
But for all his military skill, Gen Dudayev was unable to win peace for his homeland. Noted for his pencil moustache and loud pinstripe suits, he was given to ranting at reporters, and proved equally intemperate in talks with Russian politicians.
Only after he was killed did Mr Yeltsin order his troops out of Chechnya. They are back again now, under Mr Putin, and the war is more brutal than ever.