Most are from settled communities in Europe, although others are originally from Georgia or Ingushetia.
Thousands of Chechens, including veterans of two Russo-Chechen wars, fighting in Ukraine against Russian troopsaccording to a spokesman for the Sheikh Mansur militia, who maintains that a large part of the population of occupied Chechnya is opposed to that war.
Islam Belokiev left Chechnya as a child together with his mother, How did 300,000 Chechenshe tells Efe, after Russia managed to suppress the independence aspirations of the territory with two wars that, according to calculations by the Chechen diaspora, caused as many deaths.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Belokiev felt that he could not sit idly by. He traveled there from the European country in which he resided and joined the Sheikh Mansur volunteer battalion, who has been fighting Russian troops for eight years.
“Several thousand Chechen fighters They are fighting in Ukraine as part of four battalions, while another is in the constitution phase,” he explained to Efe.
The operations
The Sheikh Mansur battalion, named after a Chechen leader who fought against the Russians in the 17th century, is specialized in reconnaissance missions and diversionary operations beyond enemy lines, where they destroy equipment such as tanks, helicopters and planes.
“This is where our soldiers can employ the guerrilla warfare experience that some accumulated in the Russo-Chechen wars,” Belokiev notes.
Most of the fighters come from Chechen communities settled in Europealthough others are originally from Georgia or Ingushetia and there are also Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainian soldiers.
“The Ukrainian people are now experiencing the same suffering that the Chechen people suffered during the wars of independence and during the Russian occupation,” the spokesman said. “Russia is our common enemy and this is our chance to weaken it”.
He assures that the partial mobilization decreed last week in Russia has long been a reality in Chechnya, ruled by close Kremlin ally Ramzan Kadyrov and where many young people have been forced to serve in the Russian Army, even without receiving an official mobilization order.
“Those who try to resist are threatened with acts of violence against their families, in particular against their female relatives”, says Belokiev, who expresses the conviction that the vast majority of the population, “around 90%”, opposes Moscow.
“The Chechens don’t want to fight Ukraine for Russia, a country that was killing them recently,” Belokiev stresses.
props
He assures that many Chechens are trying to flee to avoid forced mobilization and that look “hopefully” at the fighters in Ukraine.
“All we need is for the West to recognize our right to self-determination andsupport the independence of Chechnya”he affirms, and assures that, from a strategic point of view, this would weaken Russia by forcing it to allocate more resources for the control of the territory.
Open another front in Chechnya and force Russia to redirect its forces to the North Caucasus would be “an enormous relief” for Europe and for Ukraine, he emphasized.
On the contrary, Belokiev laments, some European countries extradite Chechens to Russia, which demands their return based on false accusations and despite the fact that they face torture and inhuman treatment by the Kadyrov regime.
It points to the case of Amina Gerijanova, a Chechen woman who, as documented by Amnesty International (AI) was arrested in Romania after having fled with her son of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where she lived, and at risk of being returned to Russian territory.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, a petition for President Volodymyr Zelensky to recognize Chechnya’s independence has already collected half of the 25,000 signatures needed for the government to take it into consideration.
EFE Agency
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