KYIV — “After Ukraine, Chechnya,” says the Chechen commander preventing on Kyiv’s facet.
The Chechen troopers are clear they’re in Ukraine to make up for round two centuries of Russian oppression of their mountainous and often mutinous homeland — from Joseph Stalin’s inhabitants deportation in the Forties to Boris Yeltsin’s razing of their capital Grozny to the present, brutal rule of Moscow’s satrap in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
“We are tired of Russia,” provides the 45-year-old commander, who requested to be recognized solely by his army name signal Torto, a reference to a fort close to his hometown again in Chechnya, which he left as a younger insurgent quickly after the Second Chechen War ended in 2009.
“Russia is like a drunk neighbor. One day he comes to your home and wants to burn it. You catch him, he runs away. Another day he comes back sober and begs for forgiveness. And then he returns drunk with a pistol and kills your wife and kids,” he says.
“This is the Third Chechen War — and this time we will win,” interjects one among Torto’s troopers, a 20-something who goes by the decision signal Maga. A husband and father, he says his associate totally helps his resolution to struggle, though she “worries about me but knows this fighting needs to be done.”
There are round 150 to 200 Chechen volunteers preventing on the Ukrainian facet, most the émigré sons and grandsons of fighters who fought in the First or Second Chechen Wars.
They are divided into three formations — the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, named after the primary post-Soviet president of impartial Chechnya; the Sheikh Mansur battalion, which has been criticized for ties with Islamist teams; and a extra secretive battalion that works with Ukraine’s army intelligence service, GUR, and whose members costume in black and even when in the secure confines of Kyiv transfer round armed and sporting ski masks.
The consensus among the many international volunteers right here is that the Chechens are among the many most dedicated and ideological in regards to the struggle, as a lot because the 200 or so Belarusians who struggle for Ukraine, and rather more so than many of the Westerners and Latin American volunteers. The latter are typically right here for the cash. The former — primarily Americans and Brits — are usually veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and with a number of exceptions acknowledge they’re right here as a result of they didn’t fancy civilian life and don’t need their expertise and coaching going to waste, though additionally they subscribe to the rightness of the Ukrainian trigger.
The Chechens are at present engaged largely in Bakhmut, the monthslong bloody battle that’s led to excessive casualties on either side and has been in comparison with clashes in World War I for its gore. A eager pupil of army historical past, Torto says, “it is Verdun,” a reference to the longest battle of World War I.
“It is sheer hell,” provides Torto, who has lived in Ukraine since 2016 and earlier than that in Germany.
We are sitting in the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion’s so-called clubroom, a basement in the suburbs of Kyiv, discussing why they’re preventing in this warfare removed from their homeland in addition to discussing the qualities and traits of different international volunteers battling in Ukraine towards Russia and what they give thought to the Chechens preventing for Vladimir Putin — an estimated 12,000 of them at varied occasions since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Both Torto and Maga are in little doubt that they finally are right here to struggle for Chechnya — a defeat in Ukraine for Russia will lead inexorably to an armed rebellion in their homeland in the North Caucasus, they argue, and never simply there however proper throughout the Caucasus area sandwiched between the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. “Sooner or later, we will all be free,” says Torto, a big bearded man who strokes gently a grey tabby cat clawing on his fatigues.
“Believe me, when Russia loses this war with Ukraine, it cannot exist as a state. It’s impossible. It will fall apart,” he provides, a view echoed by Belarusian volunteers POLITICO interviewed two days earlier than. “We just need freedom. People need freedom,” Torto says.
Torto expresses disgust at Russia’s Chechen fighters, nicknamed Kadyrovites — and particularly on the atrocities they’ve been related to. Tagged the “TikTok army” for his or her on-line promotion of their brutality, the Kadyrovites have been accused of rapes, killings and looting in Bucha, and in July had been accused of the torture and castration with a field cutter of a Ukrainian POW in Pryvillia, Luhansk area, which they posted on their Telegram channel.
Some investigators suspect it may need been Kadyrovites slightly than Wagner group mercenaries who beheaded a Ukrainian captive earlier this month, which was additionally posted on-line. Maga and Torto disparage the Kadyrovites as “not real soldiers” who’re solely in Ukraine for the cash.
The Kadyrovites are helpful for Moscow as propaganda — a warning that Russia will deal with Ukraine because it did Chechnya and destroy all the pieces it could. And for Kadyrov they assist promote his picture as a warrior, they are saying. The TikTook military is seldom close to the entrance traces, the pro-Ukrainian Chechens be aware, and are solely used only for mopping-up operations to sow worry, say the pro-Ukraine fighters.
Aside from Bakhmut, the place they’ve given no quarter, their proudest moments to date in the warfare have been operating sabotage and reconnaissance operations north of Kyiv quickly after Russia’s invasion and taking part in the operation to liberate Izium, in northeast Ukraine.
But for all their diehard dedication to the struggle, the Chechens are the poor relations of the international volunteers preventing right here. Unlike the opposite international formations, they aren’t formally a part of the worldwide legion, aren’t paid by the Ukrainian authorities and should equip themselves. “They do give us ammunition when we are at the front lines,” says Maga.
To keep in the struggle they’re resourceful, interesting extensively for donations and promoting on-line warfare objects collected from the battlefield. Other international and Ukrainian items are beneficiant, typically permitting the Chechens to maintain the lion’s share of any arms and ammunition left behind by Russian forces after they retreat. “Russia is our biggest arms supplier,” chuckles Torto. Requestioned tools contains some heavy machine weapons grabbed from disabled tanks.
Why they’re handled in a different way isn’t totally defined by Ukrainian officers, who point out there are authorized issues as they’re technically Russian residents. But Torto suspects it’s rather a lot to do with the widespread notion of Chechens as cutthroat rogues and thieves.
That hasn’t deterred members of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion or dampened their enthusiasm for the struggle, and so they hope their participation in this warfare will slowly change what number of Ukrainians view Chechens — though the cruelty of the Kadyrovites, in fact, isn’t serving to.
And of the anticipated main Ukrainian counter-offensive? They have excessive hopes however say it is not going to be simple to defeat Russia, which can mobilize extra males. But the struggle should go on, says Torto.
“When I hear French or German experts talking about how Russia must be saved and not be allowed to fall apart and how it can be rebuilt as a democratic state, I just shake my head,” he says.
