Activists from the Chechen opposition movement NIYSO have reported the abduction of at least six residents of the republic, including elderly individuals. According to the activists, those abducted are residents of the Sheikh Iznaur settlement in Grozny, formerly known as Prigorodnoe. The reasons and circumstances of the incident are currently unknown, the movement said.
In its statement, NIYSO emphasised that such abductions are systematic.
‘Every day, men, women and children are abducted and held in basements without any explanation, where they are subjected to torture. The FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service) silently observes the process and directs it’, representatives of the movement claimed.
Chechen officials have not commented on the activists’ statements.
The NIYSO movement regularly publishes reports on alleged human rights violations in Chechnya, including cases of abductions, unlawful detention, and pressure on relatives of suspects.
In autumn 2025, the Supreme Court of Chechnya designated the movement as an ‘extremist organisation’. The court did not provide detailed reasoning for this decision. Representatives of the movement continue their activities outside Russia.
Chingiz Akhmadov, director of the state television company Grozny TV, commented on the court’s decision to his channel, saying that members of the group, who are reportedly hiding in Turkey and European countries, had been placed on a federal wanted list on charges of serious crimes. According to Akhmadov, they allegedly recruit young people aged 14 to 20 for terrorist purposes and spread false and ‘formulaic’ information aimed at ‘discrediting the republic’.
NIYSO, which can be translated from Chechen as ‘equality’ or ‘justice’, was established in August 2022. The group describes itself as a network of information activists who publish content on their Telegram channel, much of which concerns reports of abductions in Chechnya and criticism of Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov and Chechen authorities.
Reports of abductions in Chechnya and across the North Caucasus have regularly appeared in publications by human rights organisations and independent media. Human rights groups, including Memorial, have documented such cases over the years. Representatives of the authorities, as a rule, deny the existence of such practices.
In April 2025, NIYSO reported on the abduction of 17 teenagers from the village of Beno-Yurt in Chechnya’s Nadterechny district, writing the teenagers had been unlawfully detained because they were members of a Telegram chat room and were discussing certain topics that, from the point of view of the Chechen authorities, were ‘impermissible to discuss’.
In February 2025, NIYSO reported that 60 residents in the Chechen town of Sernovodskoe had been kidnapped by Chechen security forces. NIYSO said it was the ‘the biggest mass abduction by the Russian regime in occupied Chechnya in recent months’, noting that almost half of the victims were women. Their whereabouts are also still unknown.
That same month, NIYSO reported that hundreds of schoolchildren, as well as their family members, had been kidnapped in Chechnya in an attempt to identify an unknown person seen burning a Russian flag in a video. It is not known whether all of those abducted were eventually released.
In October 2024, security forces also reportedly kidnapped several people from the village of Engal-Yurt in Gudermes after someone set fire to fields in the village, which NIYSO reported as having been seized by the authorities.
Prior to that, in May 2024, Chechen authorities reportedly abducted 80–90 people after a man burnt a car decorated with symbols associated with Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov and his family. The suspect was allegedly found, but was never named by the authorities.
There were also reports of mass detentions in Urus-Martan in December 2022 following a conflict between a traffic police officer and a special forces officer who refused to obey him.
Loujaine Laamal
