Yaponts Arskievich Abadiyev (, ; 1906 1985) was a Soviet cavalry regiment commander during the Second World War. At the start of the war he was positioned as the deputy commander of a tank regiment, but was soon assigned as the commander of the 126th Cavalry Regiment. He briefly served as commander of the 255th Separate Chechen-Ingush Cavalry Regiment, but soon accepted command of a regiment within the 115th Kabardian-Balkar Cavalry Division. During the war he was injured multiple times, as his division was ordered to confront the 4th Panzer Army despite their cavalrymen being no match for the tanks. Despite his long service in the Red Army, his entire family was deported in the Aardakh, and was sent to Bashkortostan to command a reserve regiment. After the war he was stationed in a variety of cities, but did not get to return to his homeland of Ingushetia until the 1980s.
Early life
Abadiyev was born over a decade before the October Revolution in the Ingush village of Nasyr-Kort. Having been born during the Russo-Japanese War, he was named "Yaponts", (meaning Japanese) due to the Ingush tradition of occasionally naming children after the ethnonyms of the peoples they fought in battle. In 1924, after joining the Red Army, he was sent to cavalry school, where cadets participated in the liquidation of the kulaks. In 1930 he graduated from cavalry school and was stationed in the city of Vladikavkaz as a squadron commander. That year he was presented with an engraved Gewehr 98, after recommendation of the commander of the 28th Rifle Division, A. D. Kazitsky. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1938, in March 1939 he was appointed as the Chief of Staff of the 39th Cavalry Regiment, and in 1940 he was promoted to the position of deputy commander of the 107th Cossack Cavalry Regiment based in Armavir.
World War II
In the early days of Operation Barbarossa, Abadiyev was on the front lines of the Second World War. Initially he was deputy commander of the 117th Heavy Tank Regiment based in Smolensk, which was subjected to heavy bombardments. He went on to command the 126th Cavalry Regiment of the 28th Cavalry Division in Pavlohrad.
On 16 August 1941, General Rodion Malinovsky the commander of the 6th Army, tasked Abadiyev with leading an attack to push back enemy forces in the region of Sursk-Litovsk towards the Dnieper. On August 19, his regiment was the first in the region to begin the attack. The cavalrymen destroyed two enemy companies and completely expelled enemy forces from the village. From August 20 to 23, Abadiyev managed to organize the repulsion of a tank offensive. The regiment assumed the main fire, and thus ensured the safe exit of the division from the battlefield, ensuring the success of the operation. In October 1941, he sustained a head injury but continued to remain in command of his regiment. On 5 November 1941 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for success in combat.
255th Separate Chechen-Ingush Cavalry Regiment
In March 1942 he was appointed as the commander of the newly formed 255th Separate Chechen-Ingush Cavalry Regiment, but soon accepted a new position and was replaced by his chief of staff Movlid Visaitov in May.