Ukraine war: Chechens fighting for Kyiv say Russian troops are ‘like cattle for slaughter, leaving the ground covered with corpses’

Published

3 years ago

December 22, 2022

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In a bunker below the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut, a jihadi commander with a half a million-dollar Russian bounty on his head, joins his men in prayer.

Of the allies Ukraine has gathered in its war with Russia, among the most shadowy and deadly are the Chechens.

They are some of Vladimir Putin’s oldest enemies and among the hardest to film up close.

They are all marked men, wanted by Russia. Their movements are shrouded in secrecy. But Sky News gained access to their secret base near the frontline in one of Ukraine’s most savage battles.

During the time we spent filming them they shared insights into their foes that are worth listening to in the West.

We drove in fast on back roads to evade Russian spotters calling in artillery strikes. As we entered Bakhmut we passed gutted buildings and gaping craters, the sound of shelling was close and regular.

Inside the bunker we met some of the longest serving veterans of this war. The Chechen Sheikh Mansour Battalion has been fighting Russia in Ukraine since 2014. Their enemy’s tactics haven’t changed since this war began, they say.

“They’re sending forward troops like cattle for slaughter,” Chechen fighter Idris told us. “Leaving the ground covered with corpses. They do it every day they have no pity for their own people.”

It is the same kind of fighting Russia used in their homeland in the 1990s. From safe cover, commanders send conscripts in waves hoping to grind down their enemy with little care for their men.

Chechens have been fighting for an independent country since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After victory in the first Chechen war they were defeated by Russia, and Vladimir Putin installed a puppet leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, propping him up with billions of dollars in support.

He combines brutal repression with self-promotion on social media that veers from the sinister to the preposterous.

His Chechen forces fight on the side of Russia in this war. His Chechen enemies on the other. The conflict has given Chechen separatists a new arena for their struggle against their enemy.

Commander Muslim Cheberloyevskii leads the Sheikh Mansour battalion, one of their most active fighting units. He gives very few interviews but made an exception for Sky News. Before joining his men in Bakhmut we spoke to him on a video link to his secret location elsewhere in Ukraine.

“There can be no options here,” he said. “Russia must lose, and it must end there. If we do not defend Ukraine today, everyone will lose.”

The man who has fought Putin’s forces longer possibly than any other commander, used the interview to warn policy makers in the West they are not doing enough to defeat him.

“I think more support is necessary. The West provides support by portions, they are limited. Munitions are quickly used, they are not enough on the battlefield. If we had more, we could win quicker.”

In the bunker under Bakhmut there was the same message. Base commander Mansour has spent two decades fighting the Russians, eight of them spent in jail where he was tortured.

“I have no pity for them at all,” he said of his enemy. “Because God gave everyone a brain for thinking. If he’s not thinking he shouldn’t walk on the earth, he belongs below the ground.”

The history behind Chechnya’s battle with Russia

The Chechens have been fighting the Russians in their mountainous Caucasian homeland on and off since the days of Peter the Great in the eighteenth century. They pride themselves on their fighting spirit and warlike ability. As Muslims many of them regard their struggle with Moscow to be a jihad, or holy war.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, they fought in the mid-1990s to try and win independence and defeated Russian forces despite their enemy’s superior numbers and weapons.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russian forces retook control of Chechnya in the second Chechen war. The Russians used a pulverise and conquer strategy reducing most of the capital Grozny to rubble. They have applied the same tactics in Ukraine in cities like Mariupol.

Chechnya is now ruled by Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechen separatist turned Russian puppet, and his clan. He has used billions of dollars in Russian aid to fund a security state noted for brutal repression and over the top social media propaganda.

After years spread far and wide, Chechen freedom fighters are regrouping in Ukraine drawing in supporters from across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. When the war ends there, they hope to take their fight to Russia back home and win back their homeland.

And he warned Western leaders not to fall for Putin’s enticements to negotiate an end to this war.

“Even when they agree to negotiate and sign some documents, they do not follow them, they act treacherously.”

They are a sabotage unit, using weapons, some improvised, to strike the enemy in their trenches. Commander Mansour showed us a homemade rocket propelled grenade fashioned from a fire extinguisher packed with plastic explosives.

On a work bench nearby a suicide vest was being constructed. They wear them should Russians take them prisoner. The base is mined, they said, to blow up if the enemy should overrun it.

In an outbuilding, Deputy Commander Mansour showed off what he called his “Devil’s machine”, a rocket launcher improvised to fire converted mine clearance shells.

On his phone he shared video of the device in action at night. A fiery launch followed by a pause then a huge explosion in the distance lighting up the sky with a mushroom cloud of fire. The fighters shout Allahu Akbar: God is great.

They fight here hoping one day to take their holy war back to their homeland. Kadyrov is unpopular but well-funded and protected by thousands of well-armed security forces. When the war is over though they say they will continue fighting Russia, hoping to topple him.

Asadullah, a Ukrainian who converted to Islam and joined the battalion speaks for many of them.

“If today the war ends in Ukraine, and we win, for us it will not end,” he said.

“We will fight till that time when we destroy that empire of evil totally.”

For now though, that is a very long way off. We left their bunker and drove again at speed out of Bakhmut to a backdrop of artillery fire. Their enemy is destroying another Ukrainian city block by block in a grinding war of attrition no one looks close to winning.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

5 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

11 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

17 hours ago

August 10, 2025