Chechnya
Chechen Akhmat commander calls Trump ‘enemy of humanity’
Apti Alaudinov criticised Trump at a meeting with Moscow State University students.
Russia has reportedly conscripted a man from Chechnya convicted of murdering his daughter-in-law, sending him to fight in Ukraine.
Ruslan Umaev, a 46-year-old from the Chechen village of Bachi-Yurt, was accused of murdering his 22-year-old daughter-in-law Kristina Kokova in 2024.
The murdered woman’s mother, Anastasia Kokova, said on 12 February that Umaev was transferred from prison to a military unit by the Shali City Court in Chechnya, and that he was expected to serve in an assault unit on the frontlines in Ukraine by the end of February.
‘The killer wants to go, as he said at the trial, to “defend our homeland”, and this is not an isolated case, such scum are released to this day to the [special military operation], whose chances of being lucky to come back alive are 50/50’, wrote Kokova on Russian social media platform VK.
Kokova had earlier appealed to Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office to prevent Umaev from signing a contract with the Defence Ministry, fearing that he would escape punishment for the crime he committed. Kokova’s lawyer also expressed concern that the authorities would wipe his criminal record clean.
Kokova has again sent complaints to the Prosecutor General’s Office and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kristina Kokova lived in Lobnya near Moscow before marrying Ruslan’s, son, Akhmed Umaev, in 2020. She moved to Chechnya with her husband, where she gave birth to their daughter, but soon began complaining of physical abuse at the hands of her husband and pressure from her mother-in-law.
Umaev and Kokova got divorced, and her ex-husband’s family prevented her from communicating with her daughter, and her father-in-law, Ruslan Umaev, continued to control and harassed her, threatening to forbid her from meeting her daughter.
In September 2024, Kokova lost contact with her daughter. The authorities launched a search for her whereabouts, after which Ruslan Umaev admitted to strangling her in her sleep with a rope and then trying to burn her body. He cited her ‘immoral behavior’ as his motive.
Anastasia Kokova believed that Umaev killed her daughter to hide traces of sexual violence committed against her — traces of semen were found on her bed, but the authorities have not launched an investigation into that.
Russia has been recruiting convicts, including thousands formerly convicted of robbery, rape, and murder to fight in its invasion of Ukraine — first through Wagner — a Russian state-backed private military company founded by the late Yevgeniy Prigozhin —, and now directly through contracts with the Defence Ministry.
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