Originally published 2022-02-28.
Yes, Chechen units loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov did go to Ukraine in the first days of Russia's full-scale invasion. On 26 February 2022, two days after the attack began, the Chechen leader announced that his forces had entered the country. The big number that travelled around the world, 70,000, was something different: it was his claim about how many volunteers stood ready, not a count of soldiers sent.
That gap between what was said and what can be checked runs through the whole story. Here is what Kadyrov claimed, what reporters were able to confirm, and why Chechnya's role in this war matters well beyond the battlefield.
What Kadyrov announced in February 2022
Kadyrov, who has run the Chechen Republic since 2007, made the announcement in a video statement reported by Reuters. He presented the deployment as an act of personal loyalty to Vladimir Putin, whose decision to invade he praised without reservation. In his words, The president (Putin) took the right decision and we will carry out his orders under any circumstances.
He also made two claims that were impossible to verify at the time. First, he said his men had suffered no losses at all, insisting that not a single fighter had so much as a runny nose
. Second, he argued that Russian forces could easily capture Ukraine's big cities, including Kyiv, and were only holding back to avoid casualties. He repeated Putin's description of Ukraine's elected government as "neo-Nazis", a label Ukrainian officials called absurd and which independent analysts widely rejected; Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish and was elected with a large majority in 2019.
Within days the picture looked different. On 1 March 2022 Kadyrov himself acknowledged that two Chechen soldiers had been killed and six injured. Kyiv did not fall.
Where the 70,000 and 12,000 figures came from
Numbers in wartime propaganda need careful labels, and three different figures got mixed together in early coverage:
- 70,000 volunteers "ready". At a rally in Grozny on 25 February 2022, Kadyrov said more than 70,000 people were prepared to fight in Ukraine. The regional news agency Caucasian Knot noted that several thousand Chechen law-enforcement officers attended that rally. A pledge of readiness is not a deployment.
- About 12,000 on parade. The Russian state broadcaster RT aired footage of thousands of armed men assembled in Grozny's main square and put the number at roughly 12,000. Reuters pointed out that it was unclear whether they had actually been deployed; RT said they were waiting for an order from Putin.
- One thousand sent in March. On 17 March 2022 Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that a group of a thousand volunteers was heading to Ukraine under Apty Alaudinov, one of his senior security aides. He added that Chechen fighters already there were taking part in the assault on Mariupol.
Much later, in May 2024, Kadyrov said that 43,500 soldiers from Chechnya had served in Ukraine over the course of the war. That is again his own figure, covering more than two years and including rotations, so it cannot be compared directly with the early claims.
Who Ramzan Kadyrov is
Kadyrov was born in 1976. His father, Akhmad Kadyrov, had been a separatist-era mufti who switched sides during the Second Chechen War and became the Kremlin-backed president of Chechnya in 2003. After his father was assassinated in May 2004, the younger Kadyrov rose quickly. Putin appointed him acting head of the republic in February 2007, and he has held power ever since.
He likes to call himself Putin's "foot soldier". His security forces, often called Kadyrovites, had already been used in support of Kremlin operations in Georgia and Syria before 2022. During the war in Ukraine Putin promoted him to lieutenant general in March 2022 and to colonel general that October.
For years Kadyrov cultivated a huge following on Instagram, posting workouts, pets, combat-style training and lavish events. Facebook and Instagram later suspended his accounts, citing US sanctions, and he moved his messaging largely to Telegram.
Why Chechnya is loyal to Moscow now
Chechnya is a mostly Muslim republic in Russia's North Caucasus. After the Soviet Union broke up, Moscow fought two brutal wars against Chechen separatists, in 1994–96 and from 1999 into the 2000s. Grozny, the capital, was largely destroyed, and tens of thousands of civilians died.
The Kremlin's answer was a bargain: huge federal subsidies to rebuild the region, and wide autonomy for Kadyrov in return for absolute personal loyalty to Putin. That is why a region that once fought Russia so fiercely sent fighters to support Russia's invasion. It also explains why Chechens appear on both sides of this war. Several units of Chechen exiles, such as the Dzhokhar Dudayev and Sheikh Mansur battalions, have fought for Ukraine, some of them since 2014, and see Kadyrov's government as a puppet of the force that crushed their independence movement.
How the Chechen forces were actually used
Ukraine said in the first week that it had destroyed a column of Chechen special forces near Hostomel, outside Kyiv, and claimed that a senior commander, Magomed Tushayev, was killed; Kadyrov disputed this, and the death was never independently confirmed. Kadyrov later posted a video suggesting he was near Hostomel himself, but Ukrainian media reported that his phone was located in Grozny, and the Kremlin said he had not directly claimed to be in Ukraine.
From June 2022 Kadyrov formed a series of "Akhmat" battalions, named after his father. Chechen units fought at Mariupol, and in 2023 the Institute for the Study of War assessed that Akhmat forces were likely replacing the Wagner group in some Donbas roles. Critics, including the investigative journalist Elena Milashina, argued that many Akhmat recruits were not Chechens at all. Several military analysts described the early Chechen presence as largely psychological, with units often kept back from the front line and heavily filmed for social media. The independent outlet Mediazona has documented hundreds of deaths of soldiers from Chechnya since February 2022.
Human rights record and sanctions
Kadyrov's government has been accused by human rights groups of kidnappings, torture and killings of critics, charges he denies. Human Rights Watch has said that enforced disappearances in Chechnya amount to crimes against humanity. In 2017, journalists reported a campaign in which gay men were rounded up, held and tortured; Kadyrov responded by claiming that there were no gay people in Chechnya.
The UK, the US and the EU have all sanctioned him. The US imposed Magnitsky Act sanctions in December 2017 and added further measures covering his family in 2020. In September 2025 Ukraine's security service charged him in absentia with war crimes. He has also sent three of his teenage sons to the front, a move rights lawyers flagged as a possible breach of the laws on child soldiers.
How to read claims like this
The Kadyrov announcement is a useful case study in wartime information. A leader's statement about troop strength tells you what he wants an audience to believe, whether that audience is Putin, his own fighters or the enemy. Before repeating a figure, ask three questions: Who is the source? Does the number describe soldiers deployed, people available, or a crowd at a rally? And has anyone independent, such as a news agency on the ground, a casualty database or a research institute, been able to confirm it?
In this case, the answer was clear within weeks. Chechen units did deploy, they took losses despite the early boasts, and the headline figure of 70,000 was a pledge rather than a head count.
Sources: Reuters via Khaleej Times, 26 February 2022: Chechen Putin ally says his forces have deployed to Ukraine; Caucasian Knot, 17 March 2022: Kadyrov announces sending a thousand volunteers; Wikipedia, Ramzan Kadyrov; Wikipedia, Chechen involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine; original report: Reuters.
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