 Once arrested, Barayev was said to be instantly released by the demand of Beslan Gantamirov, then the leading figure in the pro-Moscow government.In May 2000, the Russian military intelligence GRU officer leaked papers about Barayev's affiliation with FSB to a Chechen journalist.In April 2001, Barayev's men allegedly ambushed and killed Viktor Popkov, a Russian dissident working in Chechnya as an aid worker and human rights activist since 1995, in the close vicinity of a military roadblock.