A group of women from Chechnya appealed on 10 August for Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov to help return their daughters and grandchildren from areas controlled by the Islamic State. They also appealed to the well-known Chechen human rights activist Kheda Saratova with the same request.
‘Hundreds of young Chechen women not wanting to divorce and break their families, or being tricked by their husbands, have been forced to leave our country with their husbands and children and are now in warzones literally stuck between life and death’, the women’s appeal reads.
‘We are ready to accept any punishment for our daughters, if only we could get back our little grandchildren’, it continues.
Human rights activist Kheda Saratova supported the appeal and on her own behalf also asked Kadyrov to facilitate the return of women and children.
Later on 10 August, Kadyrov posted an appeal to his Instagram page for help in finding the parents of Russian children found in Mosul. He shared a video of Russian-speaking children in the city.
‘They do not remember their names, but they remember pain, fear, and death. Can someone recognise these children?’ he wrote.
On 2 August a four-year-old boy whose father took him Iraq two years ago was returned to Chechnya. A large number of people from Jordan, Iraq, and Chechnya participated in his return, according to Chechen authorities.
The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has publicly accused three Russian lawmakers — Daghestani Federation Council Senator Suleiman Kerimov, as well as State Duma MPs Bekkhan Barakhoev and Rizvan Kurbanov — of plotting to assassinate him and threatened to declare a blood feud against them.
At a meeting with Chechnya’s commanders and security forces leaders on 9 October, Kadyrov, speaking in Chechen, reportedly claimed to have information about a contract on his life. He warned that if the thre
A man who set fire to a Quran and was subsequently beaten up by Adam Kadyrov while in detention in Chechnya has been charged with high treason for allegedly sharing information with Ukrainian security services.
The Volgograd Prosecutor’s Office approved the charges against 20-year-old Nikita Zhuravel on Thursday. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Zhuravel gained public attention after footage purportedly of him burning a Quran appeared on social media. He was arrested and later
The Mufti of Chechnya and known advisor to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Salakh Mezhiev, has been elected chair of the Coordination Centre of Muslims of the North Caucasus.
On 28 September, the Council of Muftis unanimously elected Mezhiyev during a meeting in Cherkessk, the capital city of Karachay–Cherkessia.
‘I congratulate the respected Sheikh Salakh-Khadzhi Mezhiev on his election to this post. I am confident that he will justify the high trust placed in him by religious leaders o
Exiled from their republic due to threats to their lives, Chechen activists in the West navigate a difficult balance between visibility and caution, facing erasure by both Russian and Western society. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might offer Chechnya and its activists a shift in the tides.
‘Ukraine’s incredible incursion into the Kursk region made me finally believe that Russia could soon be defeated’. This is what Ali Bakaev, a Chechen online activist who now lives in London tells m