Chechens Army:

• Profile

There are 1,431,360 Chechens in Russia according to the 2010 census. At 1.04 percent in population, Chechen ethnicity ranks sixth in terms of population size in the nation.

There are a considerable number of Chechens in Chechnya, and they are closely related to the Ingush. Sunni Muslims are the Chechens.

For the majority of Chechens, clans are the primary form of social structure. The Chechen language belongs to the Caucasian family.

• The context of the past

Chechens originally inhabited the hilly regions of Chechnya before migrating to the lowlands. In the nineteenth century, Chechnya was annexed by the Russian empire following a long-running conflict.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union’s administration in the area was faced with stiff resistance. Subordination didn’t occur until the 1920s in certain places.

The Autonomous Oblast of Chechnya was established in 1922. When the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Area was combined with the Ingush Autonomous Area in December 1934, it was renamed the Chechen-Ingush ASSR.

People from Russia started to arrive in large numbers during this period. The relationships and religious brotherhoods in the area became stronger as a result of immigration.

• Mass expulsions

As punishment for suspected cooperation with Nazi Germany, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the wholesale deportation of Chechens and Ingush people overnight on February 23, 1944, even though many Chechens fought bravely in the Red Army.

As many as 20 percent of the 459,486 people transferred to Central Asia perished on the grueling trail ride. It was decided to divide the Chechen-Ingush ASSR’s territory.

People from Chechnya and the Ingush were gradually permitted to return to their ancestral homelands in the 1950s, which had been settled by Russian immigrants.

At some point in the 1970s, the region saw a spike in ethnic feelings and calls for independence. Tensions between the Ingush and the Chechens have risen since the fall of the Soviet Union.

To reclaim territory that had been ceded to North Ossetia’s control, the Chechens desired total independence from Russia, while the Ingush favored being a part of the Federation.

Chechens Army:

• The proclamation of independence and President Dudayev

Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet Air Force General, headed the Chechen self-determination movement in the late 1990s. Dudayev became Chechen President in November 1991.

After Chechnya proclaimed its independence, Russia sent soldiers to retake control of the country. Russian lawmakers rejected the plan, so the soldiers were pulled back, and Moscow instead imposed an economic embargo on the country.

Consolidating their newly-acquired sovereignty was a goal for the Chechen government A new Chechen constitution was established on March 17, 1992.

The Latin alphabet was established instead of the Cyrillic script, and Chechen and Russian became the official languages of the country. A significant exodus of Russians started.

Chechen-Ingush relations worsened, and on June 4, 1992, Russia’s parliament enacted legislation to divide the Ingush region into its own independent country.

It became apparent that the president and parliament in Chechnya were engaged in a tense standoff. Undercover backing for dissident groups was Moscow’s attempt to influence events.

During the years 1992-93, the internal resistance to President Dudayev was systematically eliminated. A civil war erupted in Chechnya in the fall of 1994 when opposition groups opposed Dudayev.

In the wake of this failure, Russia-Chechnya tensions have risen. The First Chechen War began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the republic at the end of 1994.

Vladimir Putin was forced to agree to a truce and sign a peace treaty in 1996 after Russia’s armed forces were humiliated by the Soviets.

More than 35,000 people were killed in the conflict between Russia and Chechnya, according to the most conservative estimations.

When it came to resolving the Chechen conflict, Moscow insisted on a military settlement even though both sides had suffered heavy losses.

The conflict had ramifications throughout the Caucasus and was a constant danger to the region’s peace and security.

• Invasion of Chechnya, Part II

During this time, Chechnya had a de facto but unrecognized independence from Moscow, which was not recognized internationally.

The second Chechen War began in reaction to the Chechen attacks on Dagestan and the reported bombing of Russian residential buildings by Chechen militants in 1999.

Russia’s military and pro-Moscow Chechen troops engaged in a bloody confrontation with Chechen rebels, which was marked by horrendous amounts of damage, disdain for civilian lives, and human rights abuses on both sides.

The Chechen resistance continued to operate in Chechnya and the North Caucasus after the Russian military’s capture of Grozny in 2000, which destroyed the city.

Several assaults were made against Russian citizens and pro-Russian Chechen officials.

There were hostage-takings at the Nord-Ost theater and the No.1 school in Beslan, as well as the death of pro-Russian Chechen President Ahmad-Haji Kadyrov in May 2004, which led to a worldwide outcry for the culprits.

There is a worldwide ‘war on terror,’ which Russian leaders have linked directly to the independence movement in Chechnya.

Moscow was able to impose a pro-Russian dictatorship in Grozny and eliminate important members of the Chechen resistance, including former President Aslan Maskhadov and warlord Shamil Basayev, by capitalizing on the lack of support for the Chechen cause after the Moscow and Beslan hostage-takings.

• Reign of pro-Moscow

Despite the establishment of a pro-Moscow government in Chechnya, the conflict persisted for a variety of reasons.

Conflict in Chechnya serves the interests of Russian military and security personnel, as well as those of pro-Russian Chechens, who benefit from the continuous presence of Chechen resistance.

To a certain extent, it can be said that the Chechen conflict can be described as a situation of dual power, with the pro-Russian regime and the pro-independence resistance being split by several field commanders, their armed forces as well as supporters in the wider population, as well as representatives of the resistance abroad.

When former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov was assassinated in March 2005, weeks after he had suggested an unconditional ceasefire and negotiations with Moscow to end the war, the low-intensity conflict took on a new aspect.

President Maskhadov was replaced by Abdul-Khalim Sadullaev, the Shari’a Supreme Court chairman, as commander of the resistance.

As a young man in his 30s, Sadullaev’s nomination was seen by some as a sign of a new generation of Chechen resistance fighters who were more aggressive, less receptive to negotiations with Russia, and more religious.

According to reports, the rebels are divided between those who support the creation of a sovereign Chechen republic and those who oppose this notion in favor of the creation of an Islamic state that encompasses the whole North Caucasus, including Chechnya, as a component of this new state.

Chechen army: According to Sadullaev’s pledge in June of 2005,  the rebels would quit seizing hostages and limit their assaults to military targets alone.

Only one significant operation outside of Chechnya followed Maskhadov’s death: an assault on Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, in October 2005, which resulted in the deaths of more than 130 individuals, including civilians.

Parliament elected Ramzan Kadyrov, son of slain Chechen President Ahmed-Haji Kadyrov in March 2006, and became a President a year later.

Human rights organizations in Russia have blasted Kadyrov for his suspected involvement in a slew of human rights abuses, including the kidnapping and ‘disappearance’ of people, by former Chechen warriors working for Russia’s enemies (referred to as ‘kadyrovtsy’).

The unrecognized Chechen resistance government’s former vice president and field commander Doku Umarov were designated Sadullaev successor after his death by Russian Special Forces on June 17, 2006.

When Umarov named Basayev as his vice-president only days after appointing him as a warlord responsible for the major hostage-taking at Budennovsk in 1995 and who also claimed responsibility for the 2002 Moscow theater hostage-taking, Basayev was murdered by Russian special forces on July 10th.

An assassin shot and killed Anna Politkovskaya, a campaigning journalist, in her central Moscow apartment tower in October of 2006.

Human rights abuses by Russian and Chechen security personnel in Chechnya had been widely covered by Politkovskaya, who had written extensively on this topic.

Her untimely demise sparked outrage throughout the world. In connection with her death, the Russian police made many arrests in August 2007, alleging that a Chechen criminal ring was behind the murder.

However, the war inside Chechnya has lessened, human rights and political activists in the Chechen Republic are still quite vulnerable and many have been abducted, vanished, or killed.

Journalist and international human rights award winner Natalia Estemirova was among those who were kidnapped and later discovered dead in the city of Ingushetia’s Nazran city, where she was kidnapped and later found dead.

As soon as the next month, the leader of a humanitarian group Zarema Sadulaev and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, were kidnapped and killed near the city of Grozny. Many of these assaults were attributed by activists to Kadyrov.

When it comes to the Ukraine conflict, what role does Chechen Ramzan Kadyrov play?

Analysts believe that the deployment of Chechen fighters in Ukraine is more of a ‘PR operation’
Ramzan Kadyrov, president of Russia’s Chechen Republic, claimed only two days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that his men had been dispatched to the battlefield.

When Chechen separatists took control of the region, their commander released daily updates and videos showing Chechen forces supposedly engaged in military and humanitarian tasks on Ukrainian soil.

The video was posted on March 14 and claimed that he was with Chechen troops near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, he had “no knowledge” that Kadyrov was in Ukraine, although the assertion was not independently corroborated.

Despite their reputation as deadly combatants, many claims that Chechen soldiers dispatched to Ukraine have not played a big part in the conflict on the ground.

A public relations effort that reflects both Kadyrov’s political posturing and the Kremlin’s propaganda demands has been seen as their presence.

To prove commitment to Putin, “Kadyrov’s task since becoming president has indeed been an act as the continual threat to Putin’s adversaries,”

However, as a result of these subsidies, the Chechen Republic has received as much as 87% of its budget from Russia’s federal government, which has remained unchanged even during times of austerity.

The Akhmad Kadyrov Fund has also received regular donations from the federal government, as well as the necessary monthly payments made by workers of the Chechen state and private companies.

According to reports, Kadyrov has used the Treasury-approved budget for a range of personal initiatives, including hiring stars from the West to attend his birthday party.

Chechen army: In the past, Chechen soldiers have been used in wars with the Russian military. Additionally, they fought in the 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia, as well as the initial phase of the conflict in Ukraine between 2014 and 2015.

Chechen troops have also started giving humanitarian supplies, which Kadyrov claims were purchased with money from the Akhmad fund.

While violence and instability in the North Caucasus have decreased over the last several years, the huge payments Chechnya gets from Russia’s federal budget have begun to look unwarranted, according to him.

Due to sanctions placed on Russia as a consequence of the invasion, it may not be able to disburse funds to the regional governments, including the Chechen one, as effectively as before.

According to recent reports, Kadyrov’s tactic of stoking public support for the war by extolling the virtues of his country’s military might seems to be succeeding.
Kadyrov was present at a meeting to discuss economic help for Russia’s federal areas on March 16 when Putin turned to him and said, “Say hello to your men,” thanking him for his service.

There is a significant amount of need for public relations such as this, Shvedov added, and it is not only a Chechen endeavor.