Prisoners kneeling among the dead bodies, fire opened in all directions: Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s Telegram channel is a diary of the actions of the “kadirovtsy”, the famous Chechen militias fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine.

In his fight against the “Nazis of Kyiv”, the Chechen dictator is lauded for the “courage” of his troops from the city of Mariupol, martyred by the Russians in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov (south). From eastern Ukraine to the territory of pro-Russian separatists.

Kadyrov, the son of a Chechen separatist who had dispersed to the Russian side, appeared in a photo last month surrounded by some 30 armed men in what he said was Mariupol.

Backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and accused several times of serious human rights abuses, Kadyrov claimed that he had personally interviewed and “punished” a Ukrainian who had “tortured” a Russian.

His men are often depicted with their “teeth”: wounded Ukrainian soldiers covered in blood.

All these images reflect the reputation gained by the “kadirovtsy” in operations from Chechnya to Syria and Ukraine in 2014.

In the ongoing “psychological warfare”, “the announcement of the entry of Kadyrov’s troops and the propaganda surrounding them is a weapon to destabilize the enemy,” says Aurelie Campana, an expert on Russia and political violence at Laval University (Canada).

“Feeding Fear”

“They are known for their cruelty … So talking about the use of Chechen troops serves to fuel fear among the Ukrainian people,” Campana adds in an analysis for The Conversation.

At the start of the offensive, while Putin was still betting on the rapid fall of President Volodymyr Zelensky, it was rumored that the Chechens’ task was to finish off the Ukrainian leader.

Ramzan Kadyrov, who ruled Chechnya, which is a part of the Russian Federation, with an iron fist, said at that time that Zelensky would soon become “the former president of Ukraine”.

Since then, the Ukrainian president has become a symbol of the resistance of the entire people, whose interventions on social media or on the ground daily challenge Putin, while his supporters have the opportunity to mock the “kadirovtsy”.

Although Kadyrov says his forces are 1,000, according to Russian political scientist Aleksey Malashenko, an expert on Islam, “No one knows how many Chechens are fighting in Ukraine, or exactly where they are.”

There are also Chechens fighting on the Ukrainian side.

These militias are primarily concerned with maintaining public order, which reinforces images of brutality and arbitrariness, but their worth in this war has yet to be proven.

Kadyrov announced with great pomp that his men had captured the Mariupol town hall, but a video released soon after showed that only a second administrative building was occupied.

“Kadyrov is completely loyal to Putin and is participating in the Ukraine operation to maintain his influence. For him, this is personal publicity,” says Russian political scientist Konstantin Kalachev.

“Discipline the Russians”

Kadyrov is the prime suspect in the murders of some Kremlin dissidents, such as Boris Nemtsov and power critic journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Ruslan Geremeyev (who was wounded in late March), the commander of the Chechen forces in Mariupol, is one of the suspects who organized the 2015 Nemtsov assassination.

In Ukraine, the “kadirovtsy” can be used as a support force to quell resistance even within the Russian military, as it did with some pro-Russian separatists in 2014.

“The experience of Kadyrov’s troops can be an asset not only in ending Ukrainian resistance locally, but also in the discipline of Russian troops and their allies,” says Campana.

But Kadyrov’s men do not have a common image in Moscow, some seeing them as heirs to the separatists who paid Russia a heavy price for the war in Chechnya, where they had to raze the capital, Grozny, as Mariupol has now done.

“But Putin completely trusts them. Kadyrov always presents himself as Putin’s ‘military’. His involvement in Ukraine is a personal achievement for him,” says Malashenko.