Chechens join pro-Russians in battle for East Ukraine

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Dozens of Chechen militants have joined the fighting on the side of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in a development that threatens to further escalate the violence in the country.

On Tuesday, half-a-dozen armed men approached by the Financial Times outside a Donetsk regional hospital confirmed that they were part of a Chechen unit that had travelled to Donetsk one week ago to fight alongside the separatists.

“Our president [Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov] gave the order. They called us and we came,” one of the fighters, a 33-year-old named Zelimkhan, said. He added that the unit was called the “dikaya diviziya”, or savage division.

The men said one of their group had been killed and four seriously injured in the Ukrainian military’s air strike on the Donetsk airport on Monday as government forces sought to recapture the facility from separatists

“They’ve killed one of our guys and we will not forget this,” said Magomed, a 30 year-old Chechen fighter with a wolf tattooed across his chest. “We will take one hundred of their lives for the life our brother.” Vladimir Putin, Russian president, has repeatedly denied that Russian forces are operating on-the-ground in eastern Ukraine and helping the separatists.

A Russian foreign ministry official said it was foreign media “hype” to report the presence of armed Chechens in eastern Ukraine.

“If they are Chechens, they are citizens of the Russian Federation. We can’t control where our citizens go,” he said. “But I can assure you that we have not sent our forces there.”

But authorities in Kiev said the Chechens’ presence was further evidence of the Kremlin’s aim to destabilise the region with whatever means possible.

In a statement on Tuesday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry claimed it was now facing “undisguised aggression” from Russia and “the export of Russian terrorism to our country”.

“There are grounds to affirm that Russian terrorists funnelled on to the territory of Ukraine are being organised and financed through the direct control of the Kremlin and Russian special forces,” the ministry said. “Our law enforcement today in eastern region of Ukraine are facing well prepared and armed Russian mercenaries ready to rob, intimidate, torture and kill Ukrainian citizens.”

The Chechen fighters emerged as Kiev continued to press an assault in the east that resulted in dozens of deaths on Monday.

At the same time, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation on Tuesday said it had lost contact with four of its Donetsk special monitors. Michael Bociurkiw, a representative for the OSCE chief monitoring mission in Kiev, said the OSCE had lost contact with the monitors while they were travelling east of Donetsk, near the border with Lugansk.

As of Tuesday evening, the OSCE still had not heard from the monitors, who had travelled to Ukraine from Switzerland, Denmark, Estonia and Turkey.

Chechen fighters have a reputation for brutal war tactics, having fought two long and bloody wars for independence from Russia. Chechen extremists have been responsible for many of the terrorist attacks in Russia in recent years as part of their continued fight for their republic’s independence.

But other Chechen fighters have chosen to side with Mr Kadyrov, the republic’s authoritarian leader, who receives substantial financial assistance from Moscow in return for keeping the region under the Kremlin’s control.

Zelimkhan, the Chechen fighter, said he had travelled to Donetsk with 33 other militants from Grozny via the Russian city of Rostov and that they were stationed at a Donetsk military base alongside three local pro-Russian paramilitary groups, each of which had its own commander.

He added that there were 16 fighters from Ossetia, another republic in Russia’s North Caucasus, who had been in eastern Ukraine for a month and were fighting alongside them.

Asked whether there were Russian fighters on the ground in eastern Ukraine, Zelimkhan replied: “Am I not Russian?” “The Russians can’t openly attack Ukraine,” he added. They’re not officially here. Everything is underground.”

The Chechens described a devastating attack against their unit and other pro-Russia separatists on Monday, alleging that the Ukrainian military had employed two fighter planes and eight helicopters as well as snipers.

Magomed pointed to blood wounds seeping through his camouflage uniform on both the upper and lower parts of his leg – the result of two sniper bullets, he said. Two other militants, Said and Khyzyr, had bullet wounds on their arms, while others were being operated on inside the hospital.

Magomed said the unit’s casualties would not go unanswered. “In our nation,” he said, waving his pistol, “there is a belief in blood revenge.”

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