A Chechen soldier fighting on behalf of Russia in Ukraine complained in a video recently posted online that half of his brigade was refusing to fight.
Yuri Butusov, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian news outlet Censor.Net, posted the clip of the Chechen troop he identified only as "Khamzat" on his Telegram account on Friday. Ukrainian internal affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko also shared the video on X (formerly Twitter).
Chechnya is a federal republic of Russia, and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has been a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin for years. In May 2023, Kadyrov said he had already sent more than 26,000 of his soldiers to fight in Ukraine and promised in November to send thousands more.
"The ones with us are afraid to come out. Half the brigade won't go out to fight," the Chechen soldier said, according to Gerashchenko's English subtitles. "They refuse. They don't do anything."
Newsweek could not independently verify the authenticity of the video, and the Russian Ministry of Defense was contacted via email on Friday night for comment. Due to dead bodies being visible in the clip, Newsweek declined to share the video in this story.
The Chechen pointed out the bodies of his fallen comrades on the ground.
"This is a place where one could go crazy...There's another one here, and his head was torn off," he said. "I hope the same thing will not happen to us and that we will return home."
The soldier did not disclose his location in Ukraine, but he said he was in "a very hot zone" before adding the "shelling hasn't stopped" and that "getting home alive is a big problem here."
Elsewhere in the video, the Chechen fighter described the harsh conditions of where his unit was positioned.
"We're sitting in little holes underground. Wet, no food...There are booby-trapped drones overhead. Kamikaze drones. Others drop grenades," he said.
The camera eventually settles on the Chechen unit's camp, which the soldier who recorded the video called "just an oilcloth on top" of a "dugout." Pointing past the remains of trees, he indicated his brigade must soon go fight Ukraine's military in a nearby location.
"This is where more than half the army will die and many have already died," he said.
According to Butusov's original post on Telegram, a report said that Khamzat was seriously injured and went into a coma soon after recording the video.
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Jon Jackson is an Associate Editor at Newsweek based in New York. His focus is on reporting on the Ukraine ... Read more
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