1 In another time, the slender, 27-year-old Chechen might have been a poet or a teacher.
2 But now he is what Russian soldiers dread most in the haunted streets of Grozny: a fearless sniper stalking Moscow's troops day and night.
3 Russia calls the thousands of snipers and fighters like Macksharip Chadayev 'illegal armed gangs.' The Chechens see them differently: as patriots defending their ancestral homeland against a foreign aggressor.
4 'When foreign troops invade your country, if you are really a man, a citizen of this country, then you must fight. This is clear,' Chadayev said in a recent interview.
5 On a brief respite after slipping out of Chechnya to neighboring Ingushetia, this translator-turned-militant seems like an unlikely killer.
6 He is articulate and introspective, quoting Russian proverbs and discussing world events in a slightly raspy voice.
7 He claims no anger toward the Russian soldiers he hunts, but 'I have to fight them because they are killing people, my relatives and friends.'
8 Back in Chechnya, he is a fiercely dedicated fighter who sleeps in basements in the war-torn capital of Grozny and targets Russian soldiers with his submachine gun through shattered windows, behind buildings, down alleys.
9 Moving ghost-like through the streets in winter camouflage, he is laden with cartridges containing 500 bullets, three grenades and two knives.
10 Chadayev learned fluent English in college, where he got a history teaching degree in August. Instead of teaching, he spent the first weeks of the war as a translator for journalists.
11 His startling transformation took place Dec. 31, the night Russian tanks rolled into Grozny and Chadayev thought to himself, 'this is the end.'
12 Walking toward the presidential palace to look for his fighter friends, he came across a light tank that had just been destroyed. Four Russian bodies lay outside.
13 Opening the hatch, he removed a submachine gun and continued on to the palace -- without a thought to passive resistance, or to fear.
14 'I'm not scared,' he said, shrugging. 'Better to be killed than to be a slave.'
15 He says he doesn't know if any of the Russians he has shot at, many from long range, have died. But he has no second thoughts about his actions.
16 'No one wanted this war,' he said. 'I think about it every day, every hour, and I am sure of it -- we had to fight. It is a war against the Chechen people, not just against (President Dzhokhar) Dudayev.
17 'There are some people in Chechnya who don't support our independence, but almost everybody, even women and children, are willing to fight. We don't have any choice.'
18 Someday, when the Russian forces have been pushed out -- and he is sure they will be -- Chadayev may again have the chance to be a history teacher. But he can't afford to think about the future now.
19 'I don't know how I can survive after what I've seen. Grozny is now completely ruined and many of my friends and relatives are dead,' he said sadly.
20 'If this country happens to fall under Russian occupation, I will leave. But I'd rather die than have my country lose.'

But now he is what Russian soldiers dread most in the haunted streets of Grozny : a fearless sniper stalking Moscow ' s troops day and night .
stalking Moscow ' s troops day and night
Why is he stalking Russian troops?