Chechens not fighting in full in Ukraine - military expert
The Kadyrovites, or soldiers of Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, do not consider it necessary to fight in full in Ukraine, military expert Mykhailo Zhyrokhov said on Radio NV on May 8.
"I would not degrade the military abilities of Kadyrovites. After all, the two Chechen wars allow us to say that Chechens are quite psyched, and they are still people of war. But here, I believe, they simply do not consider it necessary to fight in full, (as) it is not their war," Zhyrokhov told Radio NV.
Chechen troops are trying to avoid losses in Ukraine, so that Kadyrov can have “his own arguments in the case of internal conflicts in Russia,” according to the military expert.
"We need to understand that the Chechen Republic is small in area and population, and the loss of each Chechen fighter is more crucial for the warlord Kadyrov than the loss of hundreds of thousands of (Russian) mercenaries or regular military personnel," he said.
He also believes that the founder and leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, challenged Kadyrov "and Kadyrov, as a highlander, could not help but stepped into the fray" by proposing to replace the Wagner Group's mercenaries in Bakhmut with Kadyrov's men.
Kadyrov may have wanted to use Prigozhin's claims to declare that his fighters had seized Bakhmut, military observer Denis Popovich suggested on May 7. However, he believes Kadyrov underestimated the situation.
Prigozhin posted on May 4 a video showing rows of bodies that he claimed were Wagner mercenaries killed in a day in Bakhmut. He blamed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov for the "70% shortage of ammunition."
The next day, he threatened to withdraw his troops from Bakhmut on May 10 due to the lack of ammunition. Kadyrov declared in response that the Chechen Akhmat special forces unit was ready to be deployed in Bakhmut to replace the mercenaries.
Prigozhin said he had agreed to this, and Kadyrov even said that he had written a letter to the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin with the request.
However, Prigozhin said on May 7 that it had been promised to him that his fighters would be provided with enough ammunition and weapons in order to be able to continue offensive efforts in Bakhmut.
Russian General Sergei Surovikin would play the role of a mediator between Wagner Group mercenaries and the Defense Ministry, Prigozhin said on May 8.
Surovikin was removed late last year as commander of the Kremlin’s Ukraine invasion force.
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