Kadyrov was appointed president of the Russian republic in 2007, three years after the assassination of his father, Akhmad, the previous leader. He pledges loyalty to Putin and, in turn, the republic he runs with an iron fist has benefitted from large subsidies from Moscow. Kadyrov has been frequently accused by rights groups of involvement in the kidnapping, assassination and torture of human rights activists and critics, as well as leading anti-gay purges.
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Thousands of Chechens mobilizing south of Ukraine. Hundreds of Chechen fighters praying in the forest before battle. Dozens of Chechen special forces handed playing cards bearing the names and photos of their intended targets. Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s brutal leader, making a defiant promise to seize Kyiv.
These are the images being broadcast by Russian propaganda channels, leveraging the very presence of Chechen soldiers in Ukraine as a psychological weapon against Ukrainians.
Moscow’s weaponization of Chechen fighters, trading on stereotypes about the Chechens themselves, is part of its propaganda campaign to attempt to force Kyiv’s surrender—efforts that have, thus far, spectacularly backfired.
Russian state propaganda, and a network of pro-Kremlin Telegram channels that have been used to pump out information warfare mirroring the ongoing assault, has claimed that anywhere between 10,000 and 70,000 Chechen fighters—which Kadyrov has described as “volunteers”—are set to depart for Ukraine to bolster Moscow’s main forces
He also has recently threatened journalists from the independent Novaya Gazeta and Dozhd news outlets.
Kadyrov has been behind a series of state-sponsored anti-gay purges across Chechnya, in which hundreds of gay men have been arrested and detained in secret prisons. The purges were first revealed by the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in April 2017 and later corroborated by Human Rights Watch, among others.
“We documented a large-scale, vicious, anti-gay purge” marked by “torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings,” Tanya Lokshina, the Russia program director at Human Rights Watch, told me in a phone interview from Moscow. In 2017, a detainee told Human Rights Watch, “They electrocuted us, beat us with pipes, kicked us, and punched us, they made other inmates beat us, they called us names, spat in our faces.”
In December 2018, there were reports of a second wave of arrests and attacks against gay Chechens. Yet there has been little coverage of their plight over the past 18 months. For David France, the award-winning director of “Welcome to Chechnya,” it makes no sense to talk of a “first” or a “second” purge, as it is all part of a single ongoing campaign of persecution against gay Chechens. “They are still being hunted,” France told me in a phone interview from New York.
The hunter-in-chief is Ramzan Kadyrov, a thuggish, tiger-loving autocrat who was installed as president of Chechnya by Russian President Vladmir Putin in 2007. Kadyrov, Lokshina said, “has been enabled by the Kremlin to run Chechnya as his own fiefdom, effectively as a state within a state, where international human rights law, and even Russian legislation, is not taken into account.”
Like every good tyrant, Kadyrov has a list of “undesirables” who are demonized and scapegoated for all of the country’s problems — and top of his list are gay people. It is the Chechen leader who ordered the rounding up and detention of gay men, who he calls “subhuman” and “devils.” In recent years, he has also been “justifying and encouraging” so-called honor killings of gay Chechens by their families while his administration, France explained to me, refuses to prosecute such crimes.
In an interview in July 2017, HBO sports reporter David Scott asked Kadyrov about the anti-gay pogroms in his country. “We don’t have those kinds of people here,” Kadyrov responded. “We don’t have any gays. If there are any, take them to Canada.”
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“Praise be to god,” the Chechen president added. “Take them far from us, so we don’t have them at home. To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them.”
Kadyrov has been welcomed with open arms across the Middle East. The Chechen strongman likes to portray himself as a devout Muslim and has clamped down on alcohol while enforcing Islamic dress codes and endorsing polygamy. He sees his war on gay people as part of his “Islamization” project. France described him to me as a “madman and a despot” who “bends Islam to his own use.”
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Chechnya, though, is in a gay-hating league of its own. As Human Rights Watch has noted, the Russian republic “is a highly conservative, traditional Muslim society; homophobia is intense and rampant, and homosexuality is generally viewed as a stain on family honor.”
THE VICIOUS POGROMS against gay men in Chechnya, however, cannot only be laid at the door of Islam or Muslims. Russia itself is plagued by homophobia — encouraged both by the Russian Orthodox Church and the country’s president. “It’s obvious where Putin stands,” a frustrated Russian LGTBQ activist says in “Welcome to Chechnya.” “If they told him that gays were being killed, he wouldn’t give a damn.” In 2013, Putin signed the now-notorious “gay propaganda” law, which criminalized the distribution of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships.” Polls suggest a majority of Russians believe gays are conspiring to “destroy” the country’s values, while 1 in 5 of them want to “eliminate” gay and lesbian people from Russian society.
Then there is the global context: As the director, France, reminded me, homosexuality remains illegal in more than 70 countries across the world and is punishable by death in eight of them
Is it any wonder, then, that activists talk of a “gay genocide?” In May 2017, in fact, three French gay rights groups filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court accusing Chechnya of a policy of genocide against gay people. The legal problem, though, as France points out, is that the Genocide Convention applies only to “national, ethnical, racial, or religious” groups, thereby excluding persecuted LGBTQ communities.
“Taking this opportunity, I want to give advice to the current President Zelensky so that he calls our President, Supreme Commander Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and apologizes for not doing so sooner. Do it in order to save Ukraine. Ask for forgiveness and agree to all the conditions that Russia puts forward. This will be the most correct and patriotic step for him,” the leader declared, RT reported.
Thousands of men from Chechnya are willing to offer assistance to Russia’s armed forces, the southern republic’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has pledged, as Moscow’s military conducted the second day of its attack on Ukraine.
On Friday, 12,000 local volunteers amassed on the central square of the regional capital, Grozny. Kadyrov said the rally, which was organized in order to show their support for the Kremlin and their readiness to aid its objectives.
State TV in Chechnya reported that Kadyrov, has visited his forces in Ukraine.
The Chechens are believed to be from the South battalion of the Federal Guard Service, based in Chechnya.
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Zelensky believes Russian special forces are already in the capital. “We also have information that sabotage groups of the enemy have entered Kyiv. That’s why I am urging Kyivites: be careful, follow the rules of curfew. I remain in the government quarter together with all those who are necessary for the work of the central government.”
The Ukrainian capital is expected to be surrounded by Russian forces this weekend and the country’s resistance effectively crippled, US security officials fear.
