Some 'Kadyrovtsy' have allegedly returned to Chechnya following heavy losses in Ukraine
Some members of the “Kadyrovtsy”, so called due to their function as the household troops of Putin-backed Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, allegedly returned to Grozny, the Chechen capital, on March 13, following deployments in Ukraine, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reported on March 19, citing Ukraine’s SBU security service.
The SBU stated said that, contrary to rumors, Kadyrov himself never came to Ukraine, and that a portion of his troops were withdrawn from Kyiv Oblast to Belarus, and further to Chechnya, on March 13.
Earlier, Ukraine reported that Magomed Tushaev, the commander of the 141st motorized regiment of the Chechnya National Guard, was killed on Feb. 27 during the initial stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On Feb. 27, a video of a huge column of “Kadyrovtsy” surfaced on social media, the caption of which indicated that it was filmed in an area located north of Kyiv. Almost at the same time, another clip appeared on social networks, probably from Bucha, a suburb just outside Kyiv. In the video, a local resident points to a destroyed column of military equipment and says: “These are Kadyrov’s men.”
The counterintelligence division of the SBU later stated that on March 4, a combined detachment of 1,200 Chechen Rosgvardia, or Russian National Guard troops, arrived from Belarus via the occupied Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
The “Kadyrovtsy” set up their camp in the forest near Borodyanka, a town northwest of the Ukrainian capital. According to the SBU, later, at night, an ammunition dump was blown up in the camp, killing some of Kadyrov’s forces.
A source in the SBU told RFE / RL that the “Kadyrovtsy” began to act more cautiously and split into several groups from then on.
“They didn’t take active part in the battles, but were only engaged in harassment of the local population in the area of Borodyanka, Babyntsi, Katyuzhanka and up to Lyutizh, shooting various videos for social networks in the meantime,” he said.
Kadyrovtsy are typically not used as frontline combat troops, say analysts, and are mostly experiencing in urban pacification - a role they play with regularity in the restive Chechen province of Russia, which has rebelled twice in the past thirty years. Their heavy-handed reputation in the region has caused some to refer to them as “terror troops”, and they were credibly been accused of war crimes during the Second Chechen War.
Earlier, on March 17, Interior Ministry advisor Vadym Denysenko said that most of the Chechen troops that have been participating in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine had already been killed.
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