MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Wearing camouflage, with a
bushy salt-and-pepper beard flowing over his chest and a bowie knife sheathed
prominently in his belt, the man cut a fearsome figure in the nearly empty
restaurant. Waiters hovered apprehensively near the kitchen, and try as he
might, the man who calls himself “Muslim,” a former Chechen warlord, could not
wave them over for more tea.
Even for Ukrainians hardened by more than a year
of war here against Russian-backed separatists, the appearance of Islamic
combatants, mostly Chechens, in towns near the front lines comes as something
of a surprise — and for many of the Ukrainians, a welcome one.
“We like to fight the Russians,” said the
Chechen, who refused to give his real name. “We always fight the Russians.”
He commands one of three volunteer Islamic
battalions out of about 30 volunteer units in total fighting now in eastern Ukraine. The Islamic battalions are deployed to the
hottest zones, which is why the Chechen was here.
Fighting is intensifying around Mariupol, a
strategic seaport and industrial hub that the separatists have long coveted.
Monitors for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe say they
have seen steady nighttime shipments of Russian military equipment on a rail
line north of here.
Recently, the Ukrainian authorities released
photos — which they said were taken by a drone flying north of the city — that
showed a massing of heavy weapons, including tanks and howitzers, on the rebel
side.
Anticipating an attack in the coming months, the
Ukrainians are happy for all the help they can get.
As the Ukrainians see it, they are at a lopsided
disadvantage against the separatists because Western governments have refused
to provide the government forces with anything like the military support that
the rebels have received from Russia. The army, corrupt and underfunded, has been
largely ineffective. So the Ukrainians welcome backing even from Islamic
militants from Chechnya.
“I am on this path for 24 years now,” since the
demise of the Soviet Union, the Chechen said in an interview. “The war for us
never ended. We never ran from our war with Russia, and we never will.”
Ukrainian commanders worry that separatist
groups plan to capture access roads to Mariupol and lay siege to the city,
which had a prewar population of about half a million. To counter that, the
city has come to rely on an assortment of right-wing and Islamic militias for
its defense.
The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group,
named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance figure. It is subordinate to the
nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia.
Neither the Sheikh Mansur group nor Right Sector
is incorporated into the formal police or military, and the Ukrainian
authorities decline to say how many Chechens are fighting in eastern Ukraine. They are all unpaid.
Apart from an enemy, these groups do not have
much in common with Ukrainians — or, for that matter, with Ukraine’s Western
allies, including the United States.
Right Sector, for example, formed during last
year’s street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist
groups like White Hammer and the Trident
of Stepan Bandera. Another, the Azov group, is openly neo-Nazi, using the “Wolf’s
Hook” symbol
associated with the SS. Without addressing the issue of the Nazi symbol, the
Chechen said he got along well with the nationalists because, like him, they
love their homeland and hate the Russians.
To try to bolster the abilities of the Ukrainian
regular forces and reduce Kiev’s reliance on these quasilegal paramilitaries,
the United States Army is training the Ukrainian national guard. The Americans
are specifically prohibited from giving instruction to members of the Azov
group.
Since the Afghan war of the 1980s, Moscow has
accused the United States of encouraging Islamic militants to fight Russia
along its vulnerable southern rim, a policy that could deftly solve two
problems — containing Russia and distracting militants from the United States.
The Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has accused the Western-backed Georgian
government of infiltrating Islamic radicals into the North Caucasus, though he
has not offered proof.
In Ukraine, the Dzhokhar
Dudayev and Sheikh
Mansur units
are mostly Chechen, but they include Muslims from other former Soviet areas,
such as Uzbeks and Balkars. The third unit, Crimea, is predominantly Crimean
Tatar. There is no indication of any United States involvement with the groups.
Along the front about seven miles to the east,
the battalions career about in civilian cars, AK-47 rifles poking from the
windows, while the regular army holds back in a secondary line of defensive
trenches.
The Chechens, by all accounts, are valuable
soldiers. Ukrainian commanders lionize their skills as scouts and snipers,
saying they slip into no-man’s land to patrol and skirmish.
The Chechens are also renowned for their deft
ambushes and raids. In the Chechen wars, insurgents had a policy of killing
officers and contract soldiers who were taken prisoner, but conscripted soldiers
were spared.
In Ukraine, the Chechens’ calls of “Allahu
akbar,” or “God is great,” are said to strike fear in the hearts of the
Russians.
In the interview, the Chechen commander said his
men liked to fight with little protective gear. “This is the way we look at
it,” he said. “We believe in God, so we don’t need armored vests.”
In the interview at the restaurant, a steakhouse
and favorite haunt of Right Sector, the Chechen said he was about 45, had
fought against Russia in both Chechen wars and had seen a good deal of
violence. When he talks about combat, his eyes grow dark and inscrutable.
For the Ukrainians, the decision to quietly open
the front to figures like the Chechen — who are making their way here from
Europe and Central Asia — has brought some battle-hardened men to their side.
The Chechen had been living in France, and he founded the Chechen battalions
last fall along with Isa Musayev, an émigré from Chechnya who had been living in Denmark.
Mr. Musayev, the Chechen said, had received
approval from senior members of the Ukrainian government, but “there were no
documents, nothing was written,” he said, adding that Mr. Musayev was killed in
fighting in February.
Though religious, the Chechen groups in eastern
Ukraine are believed to adhere to a more nationalist strain of the Chechen
separatist movement, according to Ekaterina
Sikorianskaia, an expert on Chechnya with the International Crisis Group.
Not everyone is convinced. The French
authorities, on edge over Islamic extremism in immigrant communities, detained
two members of the Sheikh Mansur battalion this year on accusations of
belonging to the extremist group Islamic State, the Chechen said. He denied
that the two were members of the group.
“All of Europe is shaking with fear of the
Russians,” he said. “It’s beneficial for Europe that we fight here as
volunteers. But not everybody understands.”
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