Nanna Heitmann spent time observing Russian troops training in Chechnya and then traveled to Bakhmut, Ukraine. Neil MacFarquhar reported from New York.
A huge military transport plane roared to a landing on the tarmac of the main airfield in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic in southeastern Russia, and a group of 120 volunteer fighters headed for Ukraine climbed aboard.
Dressed in camouflage, the new troops had just completed at least 10 days of training in Gudermes, near Grozny, at the Special Forces University, which accepts men from all over Russia for general military training.
Some of the students lacked combat experience. Others were veterans returning to Ukraine for their second or third tour, including former mercenaries from the Wagner militia, disbanded in 2023 after a brief mutiny against the Kremlin.
Some Wagner fighters, irritated by the idea of working for the Russian Defense Ministry, transferred entire units to Chechen-trained forces known as Akhmat battalions, intending in part to absorb fighters from outside the Russian military. Wagner veterans were often recruited first from prison, including a thin man with a gold front tooth, identified only by his military call sign, “Jedi,” because of the possibility of reprisals.
“Go for your country? What kind of homeland? It kept me in prison my whole life,” said Jedi, 39, a construction worker who was convicted of theft and fraud. In and out of jail since he was 14, he had six months left on a six-year sentence when he signed up.
“Volunteers go for the money,” he said. “I have yet to meet anyone here because of the ideology.” She also wanted a clean slate, she said.
Large signing bonuses plus payments of about $2,000 a month, at least double the average salary in Russia, have spurred recruitment.
The training near Grozny highlights the evolution of ethnic loyalties manifested in this war. Some of those now training there were last in Chechnya as young recruits of the Russian army, fighting against Chechens who were part of the separatist movement.
The participation of some Chechens represents another reversal of history: after hundreds of years of enmity with Russia, Chechens were deploying to Ukraine to fight Moscow’s war.
The separatist movement of the 1990s culminated in two brutal wars against Moscow that lasted on and off for more than a decade. The city of Grozny was devastated and tens of thousands of Chechens were killed.
Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s authoritarian leader, has taken an aggressive stance toward Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. Chechen forces have claimed a pivotal role in some key battles, including the siege of Mariupol at the start of the war. .
But Kadyrov has faced accusations that he has refrained from sending his fighters into the fight in full force, with Chechens dying in smaller numbers than soldiers from other minority areas. Saving his fighters keeps intact his private militia, the core of the security forces that ensure his rule in Chechnya.
Instead, Kadyrov has sought to underscore his loyalty to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia by investing resources in this military training center. The regime consists of live fire and artillery exercises, some instructions on mining and demining and first aid.
The various Akhmat battalions were named, like so much else in Chechnya, for Kadyrov’s father, Akhmat Kadyrov, who switched sides to join Moscow in the separatist fight and was then assassinated in 2004.
Russia has recruited troops for its war effort wherever it could find them, seeking to minimize the need for a draft. In 2022, it lifted a near-general ban on Chechens serving in the Russian military, in the wake of the separatist movement.
Of the group that was sent to Ukraine last fall from the Grozny tarmac, many were in their 30s and 40s, and fewer than 10 were Chechens. Despite Jedi’s claims, money is not the only motivation.
Some fled their troubled home lives. Others wanted to escape the daily drudgery. Some, of course, profess to fight out of patriotism. Many of the men agreed to speak on the condition that they be identified only by their first names or military call signs for fear of reprisals.
Anatoly, 24, was among 10 men who volunteered in a small farming village high in the mountains of the picturesque south-central Altai region. “My father made me shovel snow, work, clean cow manure,” he said. “I ran away from this job to do something else. Every year it is the same.” He admitted that money was also an incentive.
Another rural worker, a 45-year-old shepherd who uses the call sign “Masyanya,” traveled some 4,500 kilometers from the Republic of Khakassia to receive training. “I am going to defend my homeland, so that war does not come here,” he said.
The contract with the Akhmat battalion lasts only four months, a big incentive compared to indefinite deployments of regular soldiers.
Last fall, Kadyrov formed a new unit, the Sheikh Mansour Battalion, named after an 18th-century imam who fought against the Russian Empire. The soldiers are all Chechens or from small neighboring republics in the Caucasus mountain region, and most are in their twenties. The Chechens who fought for Ukraine against Russia first named their battalion after Sheikh Mansour, and now Kadyrov is trying to reclaim the name.
Turpal, 20, was working as a security guard for a large supermarket chain in Moscow when he got permission from his father to enroll in the new unit, saying he wanted to fight “those demons who are in Ukraine and who want to bring their ideas perverted here.”
When he left to return to the training center after a weekend visiting his parents, he hugged his mother and shook his father’s hand. “Russia has been fighting for its entire existence,” said Mayrali, Turpal’s father. “There is nothing better than that. “It is better for Chechnya to be with Russia than against Russia.”
Wagner veterans also serve in the Sheikh Mansour battalion. A 35-year-old fighter who uses the call sign “Dikiy” or “Savage,” said he had served 18 months of a nearly 10-year sentence for murder when he enlisted. He fought in Ukraine for 11 months, was wounded three times and still suffers from severe headaches.
Returning to Chechnya, he found the idea of working for $200 a month demoralizing, so he returned to the war. “I don’t know how to do anything else,” she said.
Akhmat’s troops are better equipped than the regular army; Unlike some regular Russian soldiers, they do not have to purchase their own basic equipment.
Jedi said that when he first deployed with Wagner to Ukraine, some young men from the Russian army came running asking for supplies, fuel and bread. “In Akhmat I don’t even wash my socks. I use them, I throw them, I use them,” he said. “The same applies to underwear and bedding. We have it all.”
Moscow subsidizes about 80 percent of Chechnya’s budget, although it is unclear how much goes to military training.
At the airfield, before the battalion departed, a senior officer lined up the new soldiers to wish them good luck. “Are the combatants ready?” the Scream. “Yes sir,” they bark in unison, followed by the Muslim expression “Allahu akbar!” or “God is great!” in addition to the Chechen war cry: “Akhmat Sila!” or “Akhmat rules!”
Once they reached the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, some of the men were assigned to maintain Russian control over Bakhmut, now an abandoned city after months of fierce fighting.
The streets are deserted, especially during the day, when Ukrainian drones roam overhead, searching for targets. On foggy days, fighters can sometimes be seen walking through the rubble.
Traffic comes alive at night, as wounded people from fighting spread across the Bakhmut region are evacuated. The roads are full of burned cars and ambulances.
While the war rages relentlessly above ground, the roar of artillery and shell explosions does not penetrate far below the surface, where Akhmat’s forces have taken over a field hospital first founded by Wagner.
The Bakhmut region was once famous for its sparkling wine, and the hospital operates in a maze of underground tunnels where tens of thousands of bottles remain stored along the walls. (The ban on drinking it by both Wagner and Akhmat has been largely respected.) Once a tourist attraction, the old decor is still intact; Dusty plaster statues of ancient gods loom over the wounded.
The caves are wide enough to hold at least two pickup trucks in a row, and several times a day, vehicles carrying the wounded and dead navigate the dark, fog-shrouded labyrinth. Soldiers jump out of the vehicles and quickly carry their often-groaning comrades on stretchers to the makeshift stabilization point.
One of the surgeons, Bulya, 34, has worked for Wagner, mainly in Africa, since 2017. On trips to Moscow, he said, people reacted to seeing him in his fatigues like “dirt under their fingernails.” but in Chechnya, he found more respect.
As losses pile up, Bulya said he was eager for the Russian army to reach kyiv. “I don’t need your negotiations,” he said, using an insult. “I hope Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin does it, that we go to the end. We’ll get there.”
Anastasia Trofimova contributed reporting from Grozny and Bakhmut.