Oleg Teziev is a military commander and soldier from the partially recognized Caucasian Republic of South Ossetia serving as the Republic's first Prime Minister.
Biography
Oleg Teziev was born in North Ossetia, and is a resident of Vladikavkaz.
Military career
During the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Oleg Teziev formed a people's self defense militia in Tskhinvali. Teziev purchased cars in Russia to be imported into South Ossetia to be transformed into technicals. Teziev's technical convoys would be attacked by both the KGB as well as the local Georgian Police. In one instance a Georgian Self Defense militia in one of the ethnically Georgian villages between Tskhinvali and the Roki Tunnel destroyed one of the technicals killing it's two occupants.
Shortly afterwards Teziev was approached in Vladikavkaz in 1989 and offered to be the minister of defense for South Ossetia, then still the South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast. Besides the Parliament of South Ossetia, the militias where the only other functioning organ of state, making Teziev one of the most important people in the autonomy. Teziev organized every district of Tskhinvali to raise its own company of militia complete with a command structure, and personally outfitted them out of his own pocket. Later in 1989 Teziev would begin to fight a series of skirmishes against both the Soviet Government which rejected South Ossetia's autonomy, and local Georgian militias called Forest Brothers raised from ethnically Georgian villages in South Ossetia and supported by Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Teziev would work to make a unified central military command for all the Ossetian militias, as well as raise a South Ossetian OMON unit, commanded by Colonel Vadim Gazzaev. Teziev's militias eventually usurped power from the Georgian Police, with the locals coming to them to settle legal disputes and apprehend criminals. In an effort to professionalize the militias into an actual army, Teziev modeled the militia units after the Soviet Airborne Forces, and built them on the premise of fighting a guerilla war in depth with little supplies and began raiding Georgian artillery positions.
After the Soviet Union was finally dissolved in 1991 most of the equipment reserves in the region where seized by generals and sold off, and the Russian units in South Ossetia withdrew, leaving Teziev to largely supply his militias off equipment he bought from the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. During his effort to procure weapons Teziev worked with the North Ossetian Mafia, but broke off relations after they attempted to kill him. Teziev also claimed to have made three dummy nuclear bombs made of trace amounts of plutonium to register on a geiger counter in an effort to stave off a Georgian action against South Ossetia. He proclaimed that he had planted one in Tskhinvali, one in Tbilisi, and one in Java. Then he had two foreign journalists, a German and a Japanese, kidnapped and showed one of the fake bombs, and then released. He claimed that the staged nukes were to try and draw Russian and foreign interest into the conflict in South Ossetia. Teziev's forces also raided Russian armories and distributed weapons and ammunition to anyone who asked that spoke Ossetian. Teziev's tenure as Defense Minister would end after the Sochi agreement when Russian authorities moved into the country and threatened to have Teziev arrested for his role in the looting of the armories
During the Russo-Georgian War Teziev once again served as a commander and claimed to have witnessed Georgian troops throwing grenades into basements full of civilians.
Prime Minister
Teziev served as the first Prime Minister of South Ossetia, starting on 28 November 1991 as an Independent. As the Republic's Head of government, he accepted the JPKF, a joint peacekeeping force of Georgians and Russians, into the Republic while also stating that the ultimate goal of South Ossetia was it's annexation into Russia, sooner rather than later.
Later career
Teziev would also serve as a member of the Parliament of South Ossetia. During which he stated that:
After leaving office, Teziev served as chairman of Civic Initiative, a Vladikavkaz-based support group for South Ossetian refugees into North Ossetia. As chairman, Teziev commented on why Ossetians don't want to return to Georgia proper, stating that "Refugees don't trust the law or Georgian authorities," and that "Most of them have settled down in North Ossetia. Their children go to Russian schools and are being raised in another cultural environment."