Kadyrov sends Chechnya’s fifth regiment to Ukraine

A new motorised rifle regiment of the Russian Defence Ministry called Akhmat-Kavkaz has been formed in Chechnya. Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov personally attended the first formation of the unit in Grozny on Monday, where he said that ‘with such power it is possible to reach [Kyiv]’.

According to Chechen Prime Minister Magomed Daudov, since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the republic has already formed five regiments, including the latest one, and five battalions under the Russian Defence Ministry.

He claims that during the three years of war 54,262 fighters have been sent from the region to the front, of whom 21,283 were ‘volunteers’. It is likely that he was referring to volunteers from different regions of Russia being trained at the ‘Russian Special Forces University’ in Gudermes. According to Daudov, more than 11,000 fighters sent from Chechnya are currently fighting in Ukraine.

At the beginning of the war, Chechen Akhmat units were nicknamed ‘Tik-Tok warriors’, a moniker derived from allegations that they often filmed videos far from where battles were ongoing, and did not take part in the actual fighting.

Khusein Mezhidov, a friend of Kadyrov’s, was appointed commander of the Akhmat-Kavkaz regiment, having previously headed the 249th separate special battalion ‘South’ within the Rosgvardia (the Russian National Guard). Last summer, a member of this unit was accused of involvement in the robbery of a mobile phone shop in Russia’s Kursk region.

Adam Albakov, Chief of Staff of the 42nd Motorised Rifle Division of the Russian Army stationed in Chechnya, was present at the formation ceremony. He stated that the new regiment had been formed in fulfilment of a decree of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and a directive of the commander of the Southern Military District. The new unit became part of Albakov’s division.

However, according to the Grozny-Inform state agency, the regiment’s logistical support is entirely the responsibility of the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation, whose financing remains opaque.

In a commentary for Chechen media after the formation of the regiment, Kadyrov criticised his political opponents, who were forced to leave their homeland because of his own persecution — he accused supporters of Ichkeria (the self-declared independent Chechen republic of the 1990s) of ‘going to rallies together with representatives of the LGBT community’.

In June 2022, Kadyrov announced the creation of four new units within the Russian Defence Ministry: the West-Akhmat, South-Akhmat, East-Akhmat battalions and the North-Akhmat regiment. By the end of 2023, they were joined by Akhmat-Russia, Akhmat-Chechnya, the Sheikh Mansur battalion (a battalion with the same name fights on the side of Ukraine), and a Rosgvardia unit named after another Chechen national hero, Baysangur Benoevsky.

Human rights activists confirmed the first reports of Chechen residents being forcibly sent to war against Ukraine in the summer of 2022. Since then, activists and critics of Kadyrov have regularly reported abductions of Chechen men by police officers and blackmail under torture: either being sent to the front or serving time for a trumped-up criminal case.

One of the last mass raids took place in the republic in the autumn of 2024.

In February, the opposition movement NIYSO reported the abduction of another 60 local residents in Chechnya. Non-mass kidnappings, according to activists, are even more frequent, and it is not uncommon for torture in police stations to end in death.

In September 2024, the NC SOS Crisis Group reported that detained gay men were forcibly sent to war in Ukraine. According to human rights defenders, detained men were blackmailed by offering a choice between criminal prosecution or being sent to the front. At least seven such cases are known, one of which ended in the death of the person sent to war.

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OC MediaElizaveta Chukharova