Chechen Akhmat commander criticises complaints of Kursk region residents

During an interview with a TV channel based in Ukraine-occupied Kursk, Apti Alaudinov, the commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat unit, criticised complaints from residents of the region about the lack of help from Moscow following Ukraine’s occupation of the region.

Speaking to a journalist from the local Seim TV channel, Alaudinov said he had seen several clips on the internet where ‘healthy men sit and ask:make claims about when you will liberate our lands?’. He advised residents of the region to instead ‘go to the military enlistment centre, sign a contract and show us what you can do’, adding that those who did not go ‘with weapons in their hands to defend the Fatherland’ should ‘at least keep quiet’.

He also advised those complaining about the lack of help from the authorities to pay attention to the ‘social package’ in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, and to compare what is happening with the experience of Chechnya itself.

‘I had a time in my life when there was boiling water in the house, there was tea, black bread. The sugar we could put in our tea was a treat. Those were the times, [though they were] very hard. I don’t see such harsh conditions [for Kursk refugees] as we had then. The whole country is trying to help, the administration is trying to help, and at the same time the people who receive all this somewhere else are dissatisfied’, he said.

Alaudinov had earlier assured residents that fighting in the border region would end as early as November 2024.

Earlier in January 2024, residents of Kursk’s Glushkovsky district sent a petition complaining of a lack of payments for destroyed housing. The petition was discussed on Seim, and footage was later shown of a meeting between Kursk’s Deputy Governor with residents of the Glushkovsky, Sudzhansky, and Bolshesoldatsky districts.

During the meeting, Khinshtein called such material problems ‘something wrong,’ comparing the situation to that of the Russian citizens remaining in the territories occupied by the Armed forces of Ukraine (AFU).

At the beginning of the AFU operation in the Kursk region, Alaudinov was the key spokesperson for the Russian army about what had been happening in the region. However, by October 2024, state news agencies had almost stopped mentioning him. At around the same time, Alaudinov  began actively shifting responsibility for the breakthrough in the border region to other units of the Ministry of Defence, the ‘valiant border guards’, and enlisted soldiers.

The Ukrainian army entered the territory of Russia’s Kursk region on 6 August. The AFU claims control over dozens of settlements, including the district centre of Sudzha. Russian authorities have largely not commented on the fighting.

According to official data, more than 133,000 people have fled their homes in the Sudzhansky, Glushkovsky and Korenevsky districts, where the fighting is taking place, as well as in a number of other border districts in the Kursk region. Displaced Kursk residents complain of problems with accommodation and receiving benefits. There have also been cases of looting in settlements that were not under AFU control.

Russian neo-Nazi leader meets Chechen special forces commander in unlikely alliance

The commander of Chechnya’s ‘Akhmat’ unit and the leader of the notorious neo-Nazi paramilitary group Rusich announce future ‘cooperation’.

OC MediaElizaveta Chukharova