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

Even after US strikes, Iran may still have the ability to make a nuclear bomb

Published

4 hours ago

June 23, 2025

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Even after US strikes, Iran may still have the ability to make a nuclear bomb

It would be sensible to wait until the dust has settled before judging whether the US strikes on Iran were, in Donald Trump’s, words, “a spectacular military success”.

And when dropping bombs that weigh more than 13 tonnes each, there’s going to be a lot of dust.

The Pentagon says the operation against Iran’s three largest nuclear facilities involved 125 military aircraft, warships and submarines, including the largest operational strike by B2 bombers in history.

Follow latest: Iran considering ‘all options’ after US strikes

The B-2s dropped 14 of America’s most powerful GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs on the Natanz uranium enrichment plant and Iran’s most sophisticated nuclear facility at Fordow.

The first time, according to the Pentagon, the weapons have been used in a military operation.

The Fordow complex, buried deep in a mountain, was the only site not previously damaged by Israeli strikes over the last few days.

The use of multiple GBU-57 bombs at Fordow is telling.

Despite their size, it was known that one of them would be insufficient to penetrate 80+ metres of solid rock believed to shelter Iran’s most sophisticated uranium enrichment technology deep within Fordow.

Satellite images reveal three visible holes at two different strike points on the mountainside above the complex.

The sites appear to be close to what may have been ventilation shafts – possibly chosen to maximise damage below and render the facility useless.

Using several of the bombs in the same location is likely designed to allow each to penetrate further than the first before detonating.

If nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow were destroyed – as the US claims – or even crippled, it would certainly halt Iran’s ability to enrich the Uranium needed to make a viable nuclear weapon.

But that’s not the same as preventing Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb. To do that, they need “weapons-grade” uranium; the necessary metal-shaping, explosives and timing technology needed to trigger nuclear fission in the bomb; and a mechanism for delivering it.

The facilities targeted in the US raid are dedicated to achieving the first objective. Taking naturally occurring uranium ore, which contains around 0.7% uranium 235 – the isotope needed for nuclear fission – and concentrating it.

The centrifuges you hear about are the tools needed to enrich U-235 to the 90% purity needed for a compact “implosion”-type warhead that can be delivered by a missile.

And the reality is Iran’s centrifuges have been spinning for a long time.

United Nations nuclear inspectors warned in May that Iran had at least 408kg of uranium “enriched” to 60%.

Getting to that level represents 90% of the time and effort to get to 90% U-235. And those 400kg would yield enough of that weapons-grade uranium to make nine nuclear weapons, the inspectors concluded.

The second element is something Iran has also been working on for two decades.

Precisely shaping uranium metal and making shaped explosive charges to crush it in the right way to achieve “criticality”, the spark for the sub-atomic chain reaction that releases the terrifying energy in a nuclear explosion.

In its recent bombing campaign, Israel is thought to have targeted facilities where Iranian nuclear scientists were doing some of that work.

Analysis on the US strikes:
Trump’s two big gambles as US enters war with Iran
For Trump, the performative presidency just got real

But unlike the industrial processes needed to enrich uranium, these later steps can be carried out in laboratory-sized facilities. Easier to pack up and move, and easier to hide from prying eyes.

Given that it’s understood Iran already moved enriched uranium out of Fordow ahead of the US strike, it’s far from certain that Iran has, in fact, lost its ability to make a bomb.

And while the strikes may have delayed the logistics, it’s possible they’ve emboldened a threatened Iran to intensify its warhead-making capability if it does still have one.

Making a more compact implosion-based warhead is not easy. There is debate among experts about how advanced Iran is along that road.

But if it felt sufficiently motivated, it does have other, less sophisticated nuclear options.

Even 60% enriched uranium, of which – remember – it has a lot, can be coaxed to criticality in a much larger, cruder nuclear device.

This wouldn’t pose as much threat to its enemies, as it would be too heavy to fit on even the best of Iran’s long-range missiles.

But it would, nonetheless, elevate Iran to the status of a nuclear power.

World

Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow: What we know about Operation Midnight Hammer as US strikes Iran’s nuclear facilities

Published

4 hours ago

June 23, 2025

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Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow: What we know about Operation Midnight Hammer as US strikes Iran's nuclear facilities

Details are emerging about the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The US military has provided details about which sites have been hit and what military elements have been used, as President Donald Trump hailed the attack on social media.

From the number of bunker buster bombs dropped to where they hit, here’s what we know so far.

Follow latest: US bombers strike three Iranian nuclear sites

How did ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ unfold?

The US’s most senior military official gave details of how the attack, named Operation Midnight Hammer, unfolded.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said that at midnight on Friday, a large “B-2 strike package of bombers” launched from the US, flying east across the Atlantic.

To maintain the element of surprise, some other bombers flew west into the Pacific.

During the 18-hour flight, the planes underwent multiple rounds of refuelling.

As the seven B-2 bombers entered Iran, the US deployed “several decoys”, according to Gen Caine, and a US submarine launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Isfahan nuclear site.

At around 6.40pm EST on Saturday, the first B-2 bomber dropped two GBU 57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons, known as bunker buster bombs, on Fordow.

“The remaining bombers then hit their targets,” said Gen Caine, with 14 GBU-57s dropped in total.

Bunker buster bombs are designed to explode twice. Once to breach the ground surface, and again, once the bomb has burrowed down to a certain depth.

Israel has bunker busters in its arsenal but does not have the much more powerful GBU-57, which can only be launched from the B-2 bomber and was believed to be the only bomb capable of breaching Fordow.

This attack was the GBU-57s’ first operational use.

More than 75 weapons were used in total, including 14 30,000lb GBU-57 bunker buster bombs, and 125 aircraft took part.

The New York Times reported a US official as saying a B-2 also dropped two of the GBU-57s on the Natanz nuclear site.

The B-2s were all heading back towards the US by 7.05pm (EST), Gen Caine added, and he said the US military were not aware of any shots fired at the American jets by Iranian aircraft or air defences on the ground.

Which sites were hit?

America says it has hit the three key locations in Iran’s nuclear programme.

They include Isfahan, the location of a significant research base, as well as uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow.

Natanz was believed to have been previously damaged in Israeli strikes after bombs disrupted power to the centrifuge hall, possibly destroying the machines indirectly.

Details about the damage in the US strikes are not yet known, although Mr Trump said the three sites had been “obliterated”.

The US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth said the US had “devastated the Iranian nuclear programme”.

However, most of the highly enriched uranium at the Fordow nuclear facility was moved to an undisclosed location ahead of the attack, a senior Iranian source told the Reuters news agency.

Personnel numbers were also reduced at the site, according to the report.

Satellite images from Fordow show cargo trucks lining up at the entrance of the nuclear site in recent days.

How has Iran responded so far?

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned that the US strikes “will have everlasting consequences”, adding that his country “reserves all options” to retaliate.

“The events this morning are outrageous and will have everlasting consequences,” Mr Araghchi wrote on X. “Each and every member of the UN must be alarmed over this extremely dangerous, lawless and criminal behaviour.”

Iran has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to “maintain international peace and condemn the US strikes”, according to state media.

Multiple places in Israel have been hit by Iranian missiles in response.

Several explosions have been heard over Tel Aviv with Israeli media saying missiles have hit northern and central Israel, including in Haifa, Ness Ziona, Rishon LeZion and Tel Aviv.

Sixteen casualties were reported by the country’s emergency services.

Abbas Golroo, head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy committee, also said in a statement on social media Iran could pull out of efforts to limit the spread of nuclear technology and weapons, called the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

He cited Article 10 of the treaty, which states that an NPT member has “the right to withdraw from the treaty if it decides that extraordinary events have jeopardised the supreme interests of its country”.