He has traditionally offered the Kremlin a kind of alternative enforcement network, for intelligence gathering and taking out enemies too toxic or controversial for regular spy services. Kadyrov, who runs Chechnya as a personal fiefdom through fear and violence, may even offer inspiration in dictatorship to the Russian leader, as the economy crumbles under sanctions and Putin moves ever deeper into autocracy. So Russian commanders believe in this sense his forces have skills that may be useful in Ukraine, especially during things like the siege of Mariupol.” “Also, the older generation of Chechen fighters participated at some point in defence of Grozny, when they were fighting against Russia. “The implicit threat is there: if you don’t surrender, you may meet the same fate as peaceful cities in Georgia and Chechnya. “Kadyrov has long experience of so-called ‘cleansing operations’, and his fighters may be used as psychological tool against peaceful Ukrainians,” said Aleksandre Kvakhadze, a research fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, focused on the north Caucusus. Their reputation for brutality is a weapon in itself. He has tried to present the mobilisation as something backed across Chechen society, with schoolteachers ordered to make lists of people with space in their homes to “shelter refugees”, and claims that some government employees would forego a month’s salary because they “donated it to the war”.įor Putin, the Chechen leader offers experienced fighters, honed in vicious wars of attrition against insurgency and in street-to-street fighting which is already ripping apart several Ukrainian cities. This month he launched an Arabic language channel on Telegram, apparently to capitalise on that prominence, an ambitious move for the leader of a small, non-Arabic speaking Russian region. Their prominent role despite all this is a tribute to Kadyrov’s reach, a public show of how a great power’s military depends on his band of Chechen fighters. Unlike Russians, the Chechen troops carry mobile phones, post to social media and call the conflict a war – ignoring the Kremlin’s propaganda ruling that the carnage must be called a “special operation”. In videos, troops highlight that they are under the command of Kadyrov, not the Russian military hierarchy. There is constant feuding between Chechen commanders and Russian intelligence, including petty public insults (a recent video showed fighters using feminine grammar to mock a male FSB leader) and little integration with the regular army. They are somewhat irregular forces for Russia to deploy. “That’s why he wants to display absolute loyalty, show he is useful, can come and do very grandiose stuff.” “There are many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Chechens who hate him, who resent him and many families who are in a state of latent blood feud against him and his family, so Kadyrov understands if he wants to to survive he needs Russia and Vladimir Putin’s backing,” said Emil Solomon Aslan from the Institute of Political Studies at Charles University in Prague. Sending his men is a way for Kadyrov to prove his loyalty to the Russian leader whose patronage is the basis of his authority. He appears to see the invasion of Ukraine as an opportunity to boost both his power and his profile. Intelligence from phones and internet suggested he never crossed into Ukraine, and even Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to endorse the video, saying the Kremlin had “no data” on a possible trip into Ukraine.īut regardless of veracity, the footage was useful propaganda, signalling how closely and enthusiastically Kadyrov has associated himself with this war. Ukrainian intelligence services say the video was likely false bravado, filmed at home in Chechnya. He used it to menace Kyiv residents with the prospect of a “personal visit”. More recently Kadyrov’s men have appeared among forces imposing a brutal siege on the port city of Mariupol, where targets have included a maternity hospital and the suffering of hundreds of thousands has become emblematic of Ukrainian pain.Īnd the Chechen leader himself even posted a video on social media recently, which he claimed was a strategy session filmed in a basement bunker in Ukraine. Elite Chechen squads were also reportedly recruited for failed attempts to assassinate key Ukrainian leaders in the first 48 hours of the invasion, western intelligence said.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |