Several European media outlets have written about Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen warlord who has sent his militia to Ukraine. He has cultivated a reputation for ruthlessness and for slavish devotion to Putin. The members of his militia pride themselves on their brutality.
According to witness statements collected by Ukrainian investigators and journalists, Kadyrovites in black and green uniforms have been behind some of the worst atrocities and human rights violations in towns such as Bucha, including against children….
“The Kadyrovites have very little to do with Chechen values,” says Christopher Swift, a national security lawyer and specialist on Russia and the Caucasus. “They’re a bizarre amalgam of very conservative Islamic ideas out of the Middle East and slavish devotion to the Putin regime.”
During the Russia-Chechen wars, his father Ahmad first fought the Soviets, then switched sides and became Putin’s favorite. After the Russians demolished Chechnya’s cities and gained control, Ahmad was elected president of the pacified Chechnya in 2003. He was assassinated a year later.
The younger Kadyrov, who had been a militia leader, immediately adopted Putin as a sort of father figure, and took over as president as soon as he turned 30 in 2007.
His governing skills were threadbare, but his militia – the Kadyrovtsy – specialised in killing and terrorising unarmed civilians, serving as his extrajudicial praetorian guard.
He keeps control over Chechnya with an iron fist, aided by what he himself has estimated as $3.8bn in annual subsidies from Moscow.
The U.K. Express ridiculed the warlord by posting a claim that he wore £1200 Prada boots into battle. The Express also wrote that the Chechens were poor fighters, lost hundreds of men, and departed for Chechnya. (None of these allegations have been verified).
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being assisted by the Chechnyan military as it enters its fourth week. President Ramzan Kadyrov – a long-time ally of Putin’s – offered his support at the conflict’s outset. But despite facing violent incursions from the two nations, Ukraine appears to have humiliated the invaders several times and are said to be shattering the myth of the hardman Chechen dictator famed for persecuting homosexuals.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Every coin has two sides…which this blog seems to ignore. Russia is being condemned up and down, left to right…but what about the atrocities being committed by the Ukrainian Army to smear Russia???
By invading Ukraine without provocation, Russia has done quite a job of smearing itself.
As Diane has pointed out, Putin invaded Ukraine in the first place not vice-versa, he is targeting residential areas, hospitals, schools and train stations, killing innocent civilians. The war is being fought on Ukrainian territory not Russian. But Ukraine would be within its rights to carry the war to Russia and bomb Russia itself, however it is not doing that. This is so blatantly obvious, why do we have to keep explaining to peskyvera what is real, what is happening. It’s apparent that she has an agenda and has no problem twisting reality into a pretzel of obfuscation, fantasy and bogus malarky. pesky vera is wasting her time here trying to say that up is down, that black is white or that 2+2=5. Nobody is buying your Putin propaganda. Ciao!
“Every coin has two sides”
Pol Pot’s decision to kill every adult over 12 years old?
Hilter’s attempted extermination of Jews and Roma?
Your totally crazy assertion that Ukrainians are doing this to themselves in a kind of mass suicide–the official Russian propaganda line–would be laughable were it not the fact that the butchery Russia has undertaken in Ukraine is not funny at all. If you are going to spread Putinist propaganda, of pesky one, at least go for something remotely plausible.
Sorry, Vera. That wasn’t really fair. I know that people who serve murderous autocrats are not allowed to think on their own but must repeat that 2 and 2 is 5 as long as that’s the order from the
крестный отец.
“Every coin has two sides…which peskyvera feels very strongly about. Hitler was being condemned up and down left to right…but the people who were just like peskyvera used to say…but what about the atrocities being committed by Jews to smear Nazis???”
peskyvera, you can smear Jews or Ukrainians or anyone you want to smear in order to justify the horrendous things that the people you support are doing, but since all your nonsense is being used to justify atrocities that you know occurred, and your defense is always that the victims deserved it, your lack of morality makes you a good spokesperson for the far right and their hero, Putin.
You do mean American arms defeated these forces. As American Arms won WW2 both in Europe and Asia. Something that Yamamoto realized on Dec 7 1941 when he said. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve” We did not turn the Pacific War around at Midway as much as in San Francisco bay and Detroit.
America is the giant .We don’t just supply $1500 toilet bowls to our Military when we spend more than the next seven Nations combined. Putin has filled the Ukrainians with the terrible resolve.
De-escalation, diplomacy, and détente are necessary to end the war in Ukraine.
James, negotiations and diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine have been ongoing since the second week of Putin’s war. Russia promised to provide evacuation routes for civilians trapped in Mariupol, then bombed the civilians that tried to use them. Russia has not allowed the International Red Cross to bring humanitarian aid to the trapped civilians in Mariupol.
There is only one person who can stop the killing and the indiscriminate murder of civilians. Putin.
Any ideas about how to persuade him to de-escalate and withdraw?
Or the total humiliation of Russian forces leading the Generals to engage in a more successful effort than Valkyrie.
Putin will stop, Mr. Eales, when he is stopped.
Peskyvera,
I assume you saw my earlier post in which I said that this war does not have two sides and that I would not post defenses of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
War is horrible. I oppose war. I hate killing and violence. I want all people to live in peace and have a chance to grow up to be healthy and happy in their lives.
When a brutal heartless tyrant starts a war, as Putin did, his actions must be repudiated forcefully and decisively.
Putin invaded Ukraine, as he did in 2014. He probably expected to meet no resistance. He did not expect the Ukrainian people to unite against his invasion.
Putin wanted to conquer Kiev and install a puppet regime, but President Zelenskyy did not run away. He stood his ground and rallied his people.
I read that the Ukrainian Army executed captured Russian soldiers, an act that was horrible. I deplore it.
But I see no point in defending Putin, the aggressor, or excusing him for sending thousands of young Russian men to die in Ukraine. I feel badly for their families too.
I will not parrot the Putin lie that the Ukrainians are killing themselves.
Putin must stop the war and withdraw as soon as possible, and Russia should pay for the rebuilding of all the cities and towns it has wantonly destroyed.
Amen, Diane. Millions of innocent Ukrainians have had their lives upended and destroyed because of the malignancy of one man, Putin.
6 and a half million Ukrainians already displaced, and the Ukrainian government just issued a warning to people in the East to get out before Putin starts Mariupoling the Donbas.
And Another Favorite “Lord Of War” Juat Placed In Charge Of Finishing Off Ukraine.
Large & In Charge General Alexander Dvornikov Now To Direct Putin Annihilation Of Ukraine. The General oversaw RU war crimes in Syria. Genocide & Subjugation are his specialities. Murder, terror, brutalization, savagery was his War College Curriculum.
Very worried, here, about Putin’s Plan B in Ukraine. Yes, the bloody little murderous Chekist creep has called up another 135,000 hapless and untrained Russian conscripts, and he will have no hesitation about sending them to be slaughtered as he did the previous batch of Russian teenagers. And his Plan B will not fix many of the problems with his Plan A (misjudging the will to fight and training of the Ukrainians, untrained troops, unsecured communications, poor and inflexible lines of command, unmaintained and antiquated equipment).
However, there are many problems with Plan A that he CAN fix in Plan B, even has he hastily put one together. Because he is concentrating on the East and South, now, his resources will not be spread out on so many different fronts. He can use anti-aircraft equipment stationed in Crimea and in Russia, along the Eastern Ukrainian border, to achieve air dominance in the East and South, and he can also use bombardment from Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. And the border with Eastern Ukraine, control of Crimea, and a strong navy in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov can help to prevent the broken or absent supply lines and poor logistics that led to the route on the Northern front. If he throws a lot of aerial and naval attack and raw, untrained troops at these smaller areas, he might be able to achieve dominance, though at the cost of lots and lots of lives. So, Plan B is likely to make the horrors we’ve seen already (Mariupol, Bucha, etc) look like a church picnic, and this is just what Zelenskyy said the Russian Plan B would be in his recent address to the people of Greece.
Given all this, it is extremely important for the West to do all it can to ensure that Putin continues to have the problems he had with Plan A, including sending Ukraine the fighter jets and artillery and heavy-duty anti-aircraft and anti-missile technologies it needs.
Of course, the liar Putin (sorry, that’s redundant) just went on Russian television, even as he was hastily putting together a Plan B that he didn’t have before, that his “special operation” is “going strictly according to plan.”
And even if he did win this brutal war, there’s no way he could hold Ukraine. As I wrote here when some were still parroting Putin’s lie that he had no intention of invading Ukraine, even if he “won,” he and his country would lose, big time, for the result would be a vastly strengthened and united NATO and a long, bloody insurgency that he would eventually lose.
The murderous attack by Russia on the Kramatorsk railway station that killed all those children and women and elderly people attempting to flee happened on the same day that Russia hit a great many other Ukrainian train stations. Typically, now, before a ground invasion, there is aerial bombardment to destroy fuel depots, airports, ammunition depots, and other militarily useful infrastructure. That Russia did not do this before its Plan A ground invasion is one reason why it’s clear that these morons actually thought that a) they would Blitzkrieg this and b) they would be greeted with flowers. The railway bombings show that they learned their lesson from the utter failure of Plan A. It is unfortunately likely that Eastern and Southern Ukraine will be attacked heavily from the air prior to the next wave of ground invasion. Kramatorsk is just the beginning.
This is what evil looks like.
And it is doubtless tactics for ensuring that Plan B has the same problems as Plan A did that are being discussed by NATO allies right now. They shouldn’t carry this burden alone. The UN needs to act now, invoke UN Resolution 337A, and send an overwhelming peacekeeping force to Ukraine.
I’m not a religious person, but if I were, I would be saying prayers, here, for the people of Odessa.
Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
Slava Ukraini!
cx: rout
How disgusting that this man (if I can even call him that) cozies up to the dictator responsible for the genocide of his own people. Power corrupts.
And Then There Are The Children. 121,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly removed to Russia. Now Moscow plans to simplify the procedure for Russians to adopt these children, potentially separating them from their families forever. This calculated cruelty is astounding. Adoption in a destroyed economy is doubtful. Resembles Trump separating Migrant Children from their birth families with no means of re-connecting communication. A very ancient form of psychological warfare in which Putin kidnaps the children of enemy Ukraine and then raises them as enemies of their own people, obliterating their cultural identities.
Another breathtakingly evil war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, added to the long list of war crimes already committed. See Article 7(1)(d): Deportation or forcible transfer of population.
And before someone starts with the Whataboutism, yes, Trump and the architects of his policy to separate children (even babies!) from their parents, Jeff “Ku Klux” Sessions and Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, should also be arrested and tried for this horrific crime of kidnapping children.
Genocide right there. Forcibly transferring children and of a targeted group to another group and trying to destroy the culture of a group, in whole or in part, are 2 of the 5 crimes included in the UN Genocide Convention.
NATO must act to close the skies above Ukraine before the Plan B assault on Eastern and Southern Ukraine begins. Otherwise, there will be terrible carnage. Putin will only be stopped if he is stopped.
“Give a tough answer to the actions of the aggressor or the aggressor will be encouraged to move. Russia knows that the West will not cover the sky, and this fact encourages it to commit atrocities. The democratic world must be united and give a tough response, thus showing that in the twenty-first century there is no place for killing civilians and encroaching on foreign territory.” –Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska
As of 6 days ago, Koch was still operating in Russia. The Koch’s 150 university “partners” – crickets.
NYU is one of the top 5 takers of Koch money.
Putin has been obliged to call in this unsavoury crew, the notorious mercenary Wegner brigade and poverty haggard Syrians.
This is all reminiscent of the vile SS ‘police’ battalions of WWII.
They will create more problems for The Russian Army as the resolve of an already battle hardened folk will increase and pity help any hapless Russian soldier that falls into the hands of the less disciplined Ukrainian militia units.
As for these crews they have been very ‘good’ at dealing with lightly armed dissident groups and civilian villages. How well will they fair against a trained fully conventionally armed force is another matter.
“Putin’s personal” Christian ally
Wikipedia’s entry for Patriarch Kirill of Moscow