Ukraine Chechen battalions fighting for Kyiv

For all their efforts in fighting on behalf of Ukraine, if the Chechen volunteers' Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion was a football club it would be Millwall. Nobody likes us, their fans sing, and "we don't care", says Tor, 38, with a laugh.

- Daniel Boffey

"Once I heard from one Ukrainian: 'You can do what do you want here in Ukraine, but you will still in our opinion be terrorists and gangsters,"" says the Chechen private, who asked to be identified only by his callsign. "And I said: 'You know what [is] the difference between me and you, or my nation and yours? We don't care what Ukrainians think about us, we don't care what Americans, Russians or British think of us. In truth, we do not care what the Chechens think of us. Yeah. We have to do what we have to do, you know." 

The Kremlin-backed Ramzan Kadyrov's infamous Chechen militia is a well-known entity. Disparagingly known as the TikTok army for their tendency to perform military theatrics on camera for the purpose of social media shares, their main claim to fame is a record of terrorising civilians abroad and at home, where Kadyrov rules through cruelty and fear.

Less well known, perhaps, are the three Chechen battalions on the Ukrainian side, fighting on the bloodiest frontlines, unlike Kadyrov's troops, who appear to have been dropped to the rear.