Kheda Garchakhanova is a native speaker of Chechen and earned a Bachelor of Science in teaching the Chechen language and literature in 2016 from the Chechen State PedagogicalUniversity in Grozny, Chechnya. After earning her degree, she moved to the U.S. and began acareer teaching high school English. She has been teaching Chechen as a foreign language since 2017, and has developed an online self-pacedcomprehensive course for beginners.  Currently she is pursuing a master'sdegree in Applied Linguistics from Liberty University. She resides in Germantown, Maryland.John Lechner holdsan MS in Foreign Service (MSFS) from Georgetown University. He is an expert onRussia’s growing influence in Africa, and speaks fluent Russian; advancedFrench, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian(BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central AfricanRepublic). He currently works as a freelance journalist and researcher,reporting on the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya. He is an expert onthe history, languages, and politics of Central Africa, Turkey, and the formerSoviet Union. You can find his articles published in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, Kyiv Post, The Diplomat, Africa is a Country, African Arguments, The National Interest,and Defense One,among others. He resides in Washington, D.C.

Kheda Garchakhanova is a native speaker of Chechen and earned a Bachelor of Science in teaching the Chechen language and literature in 2016 from the Chechen State PedagogicalUniversity in Grozny, Chechnya. After earning her degree, she moved to the U.S. and began acareer teaching high school English. She has been teaching Chechen as a foreign language since 2017, and has developed an online self-pacedcomprehensive course for beginners.  Currently she is pursuing a master'sdegree in Applied Linguistics from Liberty University. She resides in Germantown, Maryland.John Lechner holdsan MS in Foreign Service (MSFS) from Georgetown University. He is an expert onRussia’s growing influence in Africa, and speaks fluent Russian; advancedFrench, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian(BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central AfricanRepublic). He currently works as a freelance journalist and researcher,reporting on the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya. He is an expert onthe history, languages, and politics of Central Africa, Turkey, and the formerSoviet Union. You can find his articles published in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, Kyiv Post, The Diplomat, Africa is a Country, African Arguments, The National Interest,and Defense One,among others. He resides in Washington, D.C.