Local authorities in Russia’s Chechnya are forcing 100 people to perform community service over alleged misbehavior in Moscow

The regional authorities in Russia’s Chechnya have announced that 100 people from the Southern republic are being handed compulsory community service for alleged “undignified” behavior while living in Moscow. 

The regional authorities claimed that the young people in question moved to Moscow “under the pretext of work and studies,” but ended up violating public order and, consequently, discrediting the Chechen nation. According to a report from the state channel Grozny TV, these young people are considered “criminals, fraudsters, and drug addicts.”

The men who returned from Moscow publicly stated that they are repenting their actions.

[State Duma Deputy Adam Delimkhanov] said that Chechnya’s enemies could use these offenders for their own ends, therefore the republic’s leadership is trying to save the youth and “put them on the right path.” 

The Chechen authorities have repeatedly forced Chechens who left the republic to apologize for their alleged misbehavior in Moscow. In April 2020, Chechnya forcibly returned three people who refused to pay for a taxi in the Russian capital. In October 2018, the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, ordered a Chechen teenager to clean the streets after he allegedly threw an aluminum can at a passenger on a Moscow bus and proclaimed “Akhmat is power.”