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The Ukrainian state-sponsored project Khochu Zhit’ (lit. “I Want to Live”) has published a video of approximately 30 people in military uniforms, their eyes blindfolded with paper and tape. When asked where they were from, three of the men responded “From Grozny,” the capital of Chechnya. The “I Want to Live” project claims that these are “Kadyrovites” — members of the Akhmat special forces unit — captured during Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region.
“The raid teams caught up with these Kadyrovites deep in the rear of the border. According to them, they said they were attempting to escape to avoid being captured, since Ramzan Kadyrov once said that Akhmat's fighters would not surrender. Well, usually they do, since they sit in the rear, but the situation in Kursk was developing rapidly, and these Akhmat fighters did not even try to resist,” reads the accompanying text to the video.
The Ukrainian authors also write that the Kadyrovites are of particular value in any potential prisoner exchange, as Russian negotiators “take them first.” The post also claims that Akhmat is responsible for the fact that the Ukrainian army’s breakthrough across the border succeeded in the first place: “In fact, if they had been defending the border instead of hiding behind the backs of conscripts [...] near Kursk, such a quick breakthrough would have been impossible.
On August 9, the Telegram channel ChP Grozny 95 circulated a video in which a 21-year-old enlisted soldier apologized for claiming that Akhmat was “hiding behind conscripts.”
On August 11, Akhmat commander Apti Alaudinov appeared to place the blame elsewhere, stating that the breakthrough into the Kursk Region “has a name, surname, and patronymic,” adding that he hoped Vladimir Putin “will make the right decision.” Multiple Russian pro-war commentators interpreted Alaudinov’s words as a veiled reference to the potential dismissal of Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Chief of Russia’s General Staff — the military commander in charge of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Previously, Alaudinov claimed that the Chechen fighters had “narrowly missed” advancing Ukrainian troops while holding their positions at the Russia-Ukraine border — meaning the Ukrainians bypassed Akhmat without engaging in combat. However, Russian pro-war blogger Yury Kotenok had earlier presented a completely different narrative. Kotenok claimed that the Akhmat forces were positioned in the Kursk Region in the very area where the AFU offensive had started. The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel wrote that Kadyrov's special forces stationed in the Korenevsky District “dispersed” — essentially scattered — after the first Ukrainian attacks.
The term Kadyrovites (“Kadyrovtsy”) is commonly used in Chechnya to describe any armed, ethnically Chechen men under the command of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Head of the Chechen Republic, even though they are officially under the umbrella of the Russian National Guard. Chechen militants loyal to Kadyrov have been taking part in the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2014.