Why did so many Chechens volunteer to fight against Russia in Ukraine?

When Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 it set off a series of events that eventually saw thousands of Chechen fighters join the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to fight against Russia. But why would people from a Russian republic join Moscow's enemy?

The reasons why Ukraine's Chechen fighters joined the war against Russia can be difficult to understand unless you know the complicated past between Chechnya and the Russian state, one that has been filled with a lot of violence and war similar to what's happening in Ukraine.

In 1992, Russia attempted to meddle in Chechnya’s small-scale civil war and tried to oust Dzhokhar Dudayev’s government from power. Two years later, the First Chechen War began when Russian troops entered the republic in order to restore constitutional order according to Wikipedia. 

Russia’s first war against Chechnya ended with a ceasefire and then a peace treaty but in 1999, the newly installed Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Chechnya again after pro-Chechan terrorists alleged destroyed an apartment complex in Dagestan. 

Chechnya’s capital city of Grozny was raised to the ground over the course of the war and the republic's pro-independence faction was destroyed, leading tens of thousands of Chechens to flee their homes and emigrate abroad. 

“Many of those who had fought the Russians fled abroad, fanning out across Europe and the Middle East,” wrote UnHerd’s David Patrikarakos in a February 2023 article examining the Chechen volunteers fighting for Ukraine. 

“But some were not done, and they eventually ended up in Ukraine,” Patrikarakos added that they were, “determined to keep battling Moscow wherever they could.”

Today the Ukrainian Armed Forces are home to five Chechen battalions, two of which—the Dzhokhar Dudayev and Sheikh Mansur Battalions—have been fighting Russians in Ukraine since the conflict started in 2014. 

It was while embedded in one of Ukraine’s Chechen battalions that The Guardian’s David Boffey met a 38-year-old man named Tor who explained why he and his countrymen were fighting to defend Ukraine. 

“We are fighting for the future and we are fighting for a free future for us and for Ukraine and for the young generation,” Tor told Boffey. 

“For us,” Tor added, “this young generation is more important than the old Soviet generation. We cannot count on the opinions of victims of Russian propaganda, and we have to say we don’t care so much.”

The propaganda Tor was referring to was a two-decade Russian smear campaign that portrayed Chechans as inhuman barbarians to almost every former Soviet-bloc country. 

Tor recounted a story where one Ukrainian said he was happy Chechens were there fighting Russia, but the person still considered them all to be “terrorists and gangsters.”

The perception of Chechens in Ukraine was “very bad” according to Tor. But that wasn't going to stop him from fighting the Russians. Which begs the question: Why?

In order to understand why some Chechans would fight for people who have fallen for Russia’s propaganda about them, it’s important to hear from those doing the fighting. 

When UnHerd’s David Patrikarakos asked a Chechen fighter named Kazbek why he was risking his life in Ukraine, Kazbek said it was to stop Russia from destroying Ukraine like they destroyed Chechnya. 

“I am here in Ukraine fighting because first, the Russians came to my motherland, Chechnya,” Kazbeck said. “Now they want to do here what they did to us.”