Chechen President-elect Akhmed Kadyrov named Ziyad Mukhamed Sabsabi, a Syrian-born Chechen, on 23 October to head his presidential staff. A graduate of the university of Damascus, Sabsabi subsequently studied journalism in the late 1980s and early 1990s at Leningrad State University. His fellow students were convinced that he functioned at that time as a KGB informer, according to chechenpress.com on 23 October. In early 1990, President Putin, at that time a KGB officer, occupied the post of adviser for international contacts to the university rector. Sabsabi acquired Russian citizenship in 1991. In the early 1990s, he served under then-Chechen President Djokhar Dudaev in the Chechen Foreign Ministry, but quit that post in early 1994. He became an assistant to Kadyrov in 1997, when the latter was Chechen mufti. (Interfax)