Ukraine war: Chechens fighting for Kyiv say Russian troops are ‘like cattle for slaughter, leaving the ground covered with corpses’
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.
Read more: Chilling moment Russian soldiers scour Ukrainian orphanage for children
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.
The Chechen separatists are all wanted by Russia
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.
Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov (С)
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.
The fighters are some of Vladimir Putin’s oldest enemies
“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.”
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.
They say their enemy’s tactics haven’t changed since the war began
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.
It feels like “the draft” has come six weeks early – the annual selection meeting in American football.
For three or four days, teams in the NFL attempt to woo players with the most lucrative contracts.
In a classic Emmanuel Macron manoeuvre, the French president deployed flattery in the Oval Office.
Three days later, Sir Keir Starmer the charmer upped the game, whipping out a letter from the King.
In their determination to entice the key player back onto Europe’s side, their tactical game was top-notch.
But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s arrival at the White House is the moment of truth for their charm offensive.
The Ukrainian leader has stressed the need for security guarantees before signing any agreement.
President Donald Trump seems to be suggesting that a deal on rare earth minerals provides such security.
“Digging our hearts out,” as he put it, in an economic partnership, would certainly be ground-breaking diplomacy.
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‘What a beautiful accent’
This week’s flurry in Washington reflects Europe’s concern about Trump’s push to end the war.
Ten days ago, his apparent concessions to Russia sounded alarm bells across the Atlantic.
But his meetings with Macron and Starmer were more amicable than France and the UK dared hope.
Both fact-checked him in real time when he claimed European aid for Ukraine had been given as a loan.
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Read some of Trump’s letter from the King
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An ‘intense session’ but ‘pretty good outing’
But rather than retaliate, he appeared to have heard their concerns about his U-turn towards Moscow.
Asked by one journalist if he still thought Zelenskyy was a “dictator”, he replied: “Did I really say that?”
Don’t underestimate that joke.
It is the closest Donald J Trump would ever come to a climb-down.
The publication of the detail is a pivotal moment in assessing which team he has opted to play for.
World
FBI most wanted drug lord among 29 cartel figures sent from Mexico to US as Trump turns up pressure on organisations
Mexico has sent 29 drug cartel figures, including a most wanted drug lord, to the US as the Trump administration cranks up the pressure on the crime groups.
The early days of the new US president’s second term were marked by him triggering trade wars with his nearest allies, where he threatened to hike tariffs with Mexico, and Canada, insisting the country crack down on drug cartels, immigration and the production of fentanyl.
With the imposition of the 25% tariffs just days away, drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the FBI’s “10 most wanted fugitives”, was one of the individuals handed over in the unprecedented show of cooperation.
The FBI wanted poster for Rafael Caro Quintero. Pic: AP/FBI
It comes as top Mexican officials are in Washington ahead of Tuesday’s deadline.
Those sent to the US on Thursday were rounded up from prisons across Mexico and flown to eight US cities, according to the Mexican government.
Prosecutors from both countries said the prisoners sent to the US faced charges including drug trafficking and homicide.
“We will prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the law in honour of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers – and in some cases, given their lives – to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels,” US attorney general Pamela Bondi said in a statement.
‘Cartel kingpin’
Quintero was convicted of the torture and murder of US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena in 1985.
The murder marked a low point in US-Mexico relations.
Quintero was described by the US attorney general as “a cartel kingpin who unleashed violence, destruction, and death across the United States and Mexico”.
After decades in jail, and atop the FBI’s most wanted list, he walked free in 2013 when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for killing Mr Camarena.
Rafael Caro Quintero. Pic: Reuters/FBI
Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, returned to drug trafficking and triggered bloody turf battles in the northern Mexico state of Sonora until he was arrested a second time in 2022.
The US sought his extradition shortly after, but the request remained stuck at Mexico’s foreign ministry for reasons unknown.
President Claudia Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador severely curtailed Mexican cooperation with the DEA to protest undercover US operations in Mexico targeting senior political and military officials.
‘The Lord of The Skies’
Also sent to the US were cartel leaders, security chiefs from both factions of the Sinaloa cartel, cartel finance operatives and a man wanted in connection with the killing of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy in 2022.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a once leader of the Juarez drug cartel, based in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, and brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of The Skies”, who died in a botched plastic surgery in 1997, was among those turned over to the US.
As were two leaders of the now defunct Los Zetas cartel, brothers Miguel and Omar Trevino Morales, who were known as Z-40 and Z-42.
The brothers have been accused of running the successor Northeast Cartel from prison.
Soldiers escort a man who authorities identified as Omar Trevino Morales, also known as Z-42. Pic: AP/Eduardo Verdugo
Miguel Angel Trevino Morales after his arrest. Pic: AP/Mexico’s Interior Ministry
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the purported leader of the Juarez cartel, pictured after his arrest in 2014. Pic: AP
Trump-Mexico relations
The removal of the cartel figures coincided with a visit to Washington by Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary Juan Ramon de la Fuente and other top officials, who met with their US counterparts.
Read more from Sky News:
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Mr Trump has made clear his desire to crack down on drug cartels and has pressured Mexico to work with him.
The acting head of the DEA, Derek Maltz, was said to have provided the White House with a list of nearly 30 targets in Mexico wanted in the US on criminal charges and Quintero was top of the list.
It was also said that Ms Sheinbaum’s government, in a rush to seek favour with the Trump administration, bypassed the usual formalities of the countries’ shared extradition treaty in this incident.
This means it could potentially allow US prosecutors to try Quintero for Mr Camarena’s murder – something not contemplated in the existing extradition request to face separate drug trafficking charges in a Brooklyn federal court.
A man’s brain was partly turned into glass after Mount Vesuvius erupted.
Researchers discovered dark fragments resembling obsidian in the skull of a man in the ancient settlement of Herculaneum.
Along with Pompeii, the ancient settlement was obliterated in 79AD when the volcano erupted, killing thousands and burying both under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud – preserving them in excellent condition for future archaeologists.
The remains of a custodian killed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Pic: Reuters/Pier Paolo Petrone
The man was first discovered in the 1960s inside a building called the College of the Augustales, which was dedicated to the cult of Emperor Augustus.
He is thought to have been the college’s custodian and was killed in his bed, around midnight when he was assumed to be asleep, in the first effects of the eruption as the burning hot ash cloud hit.
The city was buried in the latter stages of the geological event.
But after his remains were re-examined more recently, the glass fragments were discovered.
In a paper published on Thursday, researchers said this was the “only such occurrence” of this happening on Earth.
It was caused by a super-hot ash cloud that is thought to have suddenly descended on his city, likely instantly killing the inhabitants.
The glass was formed by vitrification, the process of transforming a substance into glass, when the brain’s organic material was exposed to the incredibly high temperatures – at least 510C (950F) – before rapidly cooling.
“The glass formed as a result of this process allowed for an integral preservation of the biological brain material and its microstructures,” said forensic anthropologist Pier Paolo Petrone of Universita di Napoli Federico II, one of the study’s lead researchers.
The archaeological site of Herculaneum with Mount Vesuvius visible in the background.
Pic: Reuters/Pier Paolo Petrone
He added: “The only other type of organic glass we have evidence of is that produced in some rare cases of vitrification of wood, sporadic cases of which have been found at Herculaneum and Pompeii.
“However, in no other case in the world have vitrified organic human or animal remains ever been found.”
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Mr Petrone continued: “I was in the room where the college’s custodian was lying in his bed to document his charred bones.
“Under the lamp, I suddenly saw small glassy remains glittering in the volcanic ash that filled the skull.
“Taking one of these fragments, it had a black appearance and shiny surfaces quite similar to obsidian, a natural glass of volcanic origin – black and shiny, whose formation is due to the very rapid cooling of the lava.
“But, unlike obsidian, the glassy remains were extremely brittle and easy to crumble.”
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