RAmzan Kadyrov once identified himself as Vladimir Putin’s called “foot soldier”. In the Ukraine war, the ruler of the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya and his fighters, feared as “Kadyrovtsy”, are increasingly the head of a praetorian guard who also protects the Russian President’s orders against dissenters from his own ranks.
Since Instagram closed Kadyrov’s appearance at the end of 2017 as a result of American sanctions, Kadyrov has primarily used a channel on the Messenger service Telegram to praise Putin and threaten opponents. The fighters out Chechnya are “participating most actively on all fronts” in Ukraine, Kadyrov wrote there on Monday morning. As he had done for days, he specifically mentioned the besieged Mariupol. “I’m sure that the city will soon be completely cleansed of the lousy nationalist phenomenon,” Kadyrov wrote, referring to the remaining Ukrainian forces in the city. He also posted a video clip that came out Mariupol should come from: Bearded Chechens in uniform present a young man in civilian clothes, according to Kadyrov a “Nazi”, who has discarded his camouflage clothing. Another video shows Chechen fighters taking away captured plainclothes men with hoods over their heads and hands tied behind their backs. Her fate remains unclear.
Russian human rights activists and journalists have often reported on the Chechen practice of extrajudicial killings in the fight against the Islamist underground, but also against homosexuals. In addition to the terms used by Putin for Ukrainians – “nationalists”, “fascists”, “Nazis” – use Kadyrov and his people also called the opponents “shaitans”, after an Arabic word for devil.
“Nationalists”, “Fascists”, “Nazis”
Kadyrov’s video clips are sometimes set to elegiac Arabic music, sometimes to rocking, menacing music. Observers emphasize that the videos distributed on Tiktok did not show real fight scenes, but rather posing fighters who, for example, fired wildly and without cover in the air or at shattered facades. They yell “Achmat sila,” “Achmat is the power,” after Kadyrov’s father, a former separatist who defected to Putin and was assassinated in 2005; and “Allahu akbar”, “God is great”. Kadyrov, who, like his father, has ties to Islamic countries, recently triumphed that no Islamic country opposed the sanctions Russia connected.
How many Kadyrovtsy in the Ukraine fight is unclear. Estimates range from hundreds to thousands. According to Kadyrov, “volunteers” from Chechnya “and other regions” of Russia are now also to go to war; his Telegram channel reportedly showed such fighters with Adam Delimkhanov, Kadyrov’s Moscow governor and Duma deputy, in Mariupol. On the one hand, Moscow is recruiting “voluntary” fighters to relieve the armed forces; on the other hand, Kadyrov’s push for his own “volunteers” (many of whom, according to critics of the regime, are admittedly forced to work) appears as an attempt to counter reports about Chechens who successfully fought for the Ukrainian side with propaganda.
