‘We’ll liberate city after city’ In their own words, Chechen soldiers fighting for Ukraine explain what drives them
Original story by Lidia Mikhalchenko from iStories. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.
In the initial months after Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, thousands of volunteer soldiers reportedly came from countries around the world to help Ukraine defend itself. Motivations varied, and many of these foreign fighters quickly proved unprepared for the realities of war, according to a recent report from The Washington Post. But of the more than 1,000 Chechens reportedly fighting with the Ukrainian military, many (if not most) share a common goal: defeating Russia in Ukraine in order to weaken Moscow and ultimately achieve Chechen independence. And most of Ukraine’s Chechen fighters, having lived through both of the Chechen Wars, are nothing if not experienced. The independent outlet iStories spoke to multiple soldiers from the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, a Chechen unit fighting for Ukraine that runs on donations and volunteers. Meduza is publishing an abridged translation of their report.
There are at least five Chechen units fighting for Ukraine, with the total number of Chechen soldiers exceeding 1,000. Most of them are veterans of the First and Second Chechen Wars who were forced to leave Chechnya after their side’s defeat, and the units are led by prominent Chechen commanders. These Chechen fighters and their Ukrainian brothers in arms are united by a common enemy — Russia — and by the hope that Ukraine can help Chechnya after the war in achieving independence from Moscow (a goal that Ukraine’s parliament supported in October, when it recognized Ichkeria as a temporarily-occupied territory).
Four of the five Chechen battalions in Ukraine are part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which provides salaries, equipment, and supplies to its fighters. The soldiers told iStories that they’re grateful to Ukraine’s military command for protecting its people and for “not turning cities into dates to be memorialized.” In general, they said, they prefer to carry out reconnaissance operations and diversionary attacks, moving quickly across the front line, instead of waiting around in trenches. “The Russians wake up, and their commander is already gone. Or dead,” said one soldier, describing what his unit tries to achieve on the battlefield.
The Chechen soldiers who spoke to iStories said that their combat experience in Ukraine has been easier than in Chechnya, where they sometimes had to spend weeks in the mountains with minimal supplies. Several of the men referred to the conflict in Ukraine as a “five-star” war.
The only Chechen battalion that doesn’t officially belong to the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, which subsists on donations, volunteers, and equipment it captures, and which “coordinates” its activities with the Ukrainian military. iStories correspondent Lidia Mikhalchenko spoke to several fighters from the Sheikh Mansur Battalion about what led them to this war and what they hope to achieve when it’s over.
These interviews were originally published on January 27, 2023.
Arbi: ‘It’s impossible to take prisoners in Bakhmut’
Arbi has lived in Ukraine since 2019, when he moved there to escape the Kadyrov-controlled Chechen security forces, known as “Kadyrovites.” He lost a brother in the First Chechen War and another brother in the Second Chechen War. He hasn’t told his family that he’s fighting in the Sheikh Mansur Battalion; his mother thinks he’s in Kyiv.
Recently, the battalion has primarily been fighting in the city of Bakhmut, currently one of the war’s focal points.
“Around-the-clock shelling. We fight according to the will of the Almighty,” Arbi told iStories:
There’s close-contact urban combat. Our guys in one building, Russians in another building, just a hundred meters away. There are no opportunities to take prisoners there. The Russians have sent in large amounts of convicts and are siccing them on us in waves. They’re throwing the convicts at us precisely so that they’ll get killed. I don’t know how else to describe it; they’re going through open areas towards positions where we have machine guns. Their group moves forward, and whoever doesn’t die gets rebuffed and turns back.
Almost all of the Chechen fighters who spoke to iStories said that they hope Chechnya will achieve independence after Ukraine’s victory, and Arbi is no exception.
“We hope Ukraine will help us. I want to live on my own land the way I want, and not the way someone else dictates,” he told iStories. “The most important thing is for [our leader] not to have some external force behind him. We can put whoever we want in power. It should be somebody we’ve chosen. But the historically, our president, or our leader, hasn’t decided much. We have nine tukkhums. Each tukkhum has a representative in the council. Traditionally, it’s through that council that Chechens regulate all issues: political ones, social ones, and economic ones.”
Just then, another Chechen fighter in the Sheikh Mansur Battalion approaches Arbi and iStories correspondent Lidia Mikhalchenko. He introduces himself by his call sign, Sabakh. After Arbi recounts a recent close call Sabakh had on the battlefield, Sabakh claps him on the shoulder. “This is my old military comrade,” he says. “He’s modest. But I know his past: he’s made more than one Russian mother cry.”
Sabakh: ‘I’m going to fight against Russia for the rest of my life’
Sabakh is 36 years old. Before coming to Ukraine, he lived in another European country. But he still remembers the First Chechen War, which began when he was just eight years old.
Sabakh’s home village, Samashki, became a symbol of the senseless slaughter carried out by the Russian authorities. “The Russian soldiers vowed that they would simply inspect everybody’s passports and leave without hurting anyone, if residents removed anyone who might put up a resistance from the village,” Sabakh recalls. “And people believed them. But [then] the Russians came in and started committing atrocities. Our family only survived because we sat in a cellar under the ruins of a house. I remember the Russian soldiers walking right over our heads and searching for people. Shouting back and forth, ‘Sanya! Vanya!’ They looted, just like they’re doing now in Ukraine.”
In the Second Chechen War, Sabakh became a reconnaissance scout. Starting when he was 14 years old, he would go into the forest during his school vacations and help local partisans. Overlooked by Russian soldiers because of his age, he traveled to neighboring towns and republics where they were stationed and gathered valuable information about the Russians’ positions and troop numbers.
In 2005, Sabakh boarded a train to Ukraine. After he was denied entry and put on a train back to Russia, he jumped out and crossed back into Ukraine on foot. From there, he went to Slovakia, then to Austria. “I got confused — I thought I was in Australia,” he recalled. He turned himself in to the police and eventually was granted asylum. “I didn’t care where I lived. After so many years of guerrilla life, I just dreamed of taking off my clothes and going to sleep. For a long time, that was my only dream.”
After Sabakh’s departure, the Kadyrov regime’s security forces repeatedly showed up at his family’s home, threatening his relatives and sometimes taking his mother and brother captive. The authorities didn’t leave his mother alone, he said, until she became gravely ill, and even now they still periodically arrest and torture his brother.
It was Sabakh’s cousin, a deputy commander in the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, who invited him to join. After a long period of indecision, Sabakh went to Mariupol in 2019 and enlisted. He said he has no plans to return to Europe.
“I’m a resident of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, and that’s what I’ve always felt myself to be,” he told iStories. “Our fathers taught us to shoot from hunting rifles when we were children. I’m going to fight against Russia my entire life. I’m going to avenge the Chechens who were killed. I’ll never forgive [Russia], and if I have sons, they’ll continue [my efforts].”
Naib: ‘I get captured alive in my sleep’
In 1994, Naib (name changed) was a college student. “I was walking through Grozny after classes at my college [one day], and I saw Russian planes bomb the city. Civilians were killed in front of my eyes. I gathered corpses, and I changed completely that day. It was as if I’d lost my soul. Nothing on this planet makes me happy or interests me. I became empty,” he told iStories.
In 2014, Naib left the European country where he was living at the time and joined the war in Ukraine.
“The only people who join the Sheikh Mansur Battalion are people who aren’t interested in a salary, who have only one goal: to return home, to liberate their homeland. We accept all kinds of people. We’re not interested in volunteers’ military professions. The main thing is that a person is patriotic and motivated,” he said.
When he travels back to Europe, he told iStories, he feels out of place. “I miss the extremes; I’ve gotten used to the adrenaline. I sleep well on the front line amid the sound of explosions. That’s how it was in the mountains of Chechnya,” he said. “I practically can’t sleep when I’m not at war. I have nightmares about being taken captive. [Or nightmares that] I want to blow myself up but can’t, or that I’m trying to shoot myself, but the bullet isn’t hitting me. I get captured alive in my sleep.”
Bogdan: ‘People will start talking about how the Sheikh Mansur Battalion is coming’
Bogdan is in his 60s. His fellow soldiers view him as an elder, introducing him to iStories correspondent Lidia Mikhalchenko as “our aksakal.” He’s also the head of the battalion’s information service.
Bogdan was born in Grozny. His parents had returned from Kazakhstan after being forcibly deported in 1944 by the Stalin regime. A civil engineer by profession, Bogdan didn’t serve as a guerilla fighter in the First Chechen War, but he did help the Chechen army in the city. “Grozny was turned into ruins. We would hear that a building was burning down somewhere and rush there. [Or] people would be killed somewhere, and we’d have to go get [their bodies],” he told iStories.
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After the start of the Second Chechen War, in 2000, Bogdan sent his family out of Chechnya but stayed behind to help fight against Russia. When the Chechen paramilitary forces lost, he said, “I decided it would be better to move to Europe and tell the truth from abroad.” He opened a business and began donating money to the Chechen resistance.
Bogdan moved to Ukraine in 2013, after the start of the Maidan Revolution. He burned his Russian passport at a protest rally there.
“Most of our battalion is located in Bakhmut,” said Bogdan. “[Though] some are in Kherson, and some are in Huliaipole. We try not to amass our forces [in one place]. Missiles have hit our bases twice. Kadyrov’s forces are hunting us, and our locations aren’t very difficult to find. So, we stay scattered, and we remain mobile. For sabotage and reconnaissance activity, groups of two or three people are plenty.”
Bogdan hopes that Russia will start to break apart after the war in Ukraine ends. He’s even prepared a plan to liberate Chechnya:
The situation in Russia will change [after its defeat], and we’ll move through Georgia with our weapons to the mountainous districts of Chechnya, liberating them. We’ll liberate city after city that way. If we send 1,000 troops there, it will become 60,000 troops within a week. Young people will rush to us through the mountain paths. We’ll start liberating our republic with our own forces. People will start talking in their kitchens about how the Sheikh Mansur Battalion is coming. It will be a national liberation movement. The more we move forward, the more the human wave will grow. And when we make it to the middle [of Chechnya], we’ll have recruited such a mass of supporters that we’ll be able to get rid of the last of the Kadyrovites with our bare hands.
Original story by Lidia Mikhalchenko from iStories
Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale