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Episode Transcript

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You're listening to Decisive Point

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

I'm speaking with Wilson Jones, author of “The Chechen Kadyrovtsy’s Coercive Violence in Ukraine (https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/15/).”

Jones is currently a defense analyst with GlobalData in London.

Welcome to Decisive Point, Wilson.

You write about the Chechen Kadyrovtsy—pro–Russian Chechens—and Ukraine. What does research say about military inequality and its relationship to coercive violence?

Wilson Jones

Military inequality theory is something coined by Jason Lyle in his book, Divided Armies. It draws on the ideas of many other researchers who have noticed how if a society has civilian inequalities and civilian divisions, those will be reflected in its military forces. So, if a society has a core ethnic “in” group with special privileges and a minority ethnic group who faces discrimination, then that divided nation will have a similarly divided military. The privileged “in” group is going to have priority for training and the best weapons and equipment and will typically be promoted to powerful leadership positions because they're seen as loyal to the regime.

Now, the discriminated group, they'll be treated with suspicion and presumed to be disloyal. And so, they get the worst weapons (and) equipment, and are generally not promoted to leadership positions. They'll also be seen as expendable by their commanders, who typically come from that privileged “in” group. What this contributes to is using these minority ethnic soldiers in high-risk, high-casualty positions as cannon fodder.

It also means that minority troops are more likely to experience coercive violence. Now, this term coersive violence refers to when allied soldiers beat torture or execute their own comrades. It's fratricidal violence. It can also involve the threats of these sorts of attacks and is used to enforce discipline or ensure that commands are followed. It can involve, literally, soldiers being forced into battle at the points of bayonets. And Russia and the Soviet Union have a very interesting history with this phenomenon. During World War II, Stalin issued Order 227, which included the infamous phrase “no step back.” It created blocking detachments who had the authority to arrest or execute retreating soldiers.

Now, this is not a unique phenomenon to Russian society, and it's documented through many countries throughout history. There are many examples of coercive violence in history, but military commanders will resort to using coercive violence in desperate circumstances when they have few other options to enforce discipline. And when there is military inequality at play, it's more likely that troops seen as expendable will be victims of coercive violence.

What's interesting is that soldiers from the discriminated group will produce poor soldiers not for inherent reasons but because discrimination and a lack of training and equipment naturally create demoralized and ineffective troops. So, the idea that one group is naturally superior or inferior often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Host

Through this lens, tell us about Chechnya and the Chechen wars.

Jones

So, Chechnya is a region of the Russian Federation, and its native Chechen society is Islamic and tribal, which is very different from Russia's Orthodox and non-tribal society. In the 1990s, Chechnya tried to cede from Russia in the context of the wider Soviet collapse, and Russia waged two wars to try and prevent this. Chechnya won de facto independence in the first war, but Russia would later reinvade and win the second war, where they installed the Kadyrov family as the local collaborator regime to rule this region.

So, Russia's defeat in the first war came at the hands of a very vicious Chechen insurgency. Even though Russia had more troops, overwhelming firepower, and air supremacy, Chechens launched hundreds of guerrilla attacks. They used snipers, IED bombs, and hit-and-run operations. Russian forces lacked human intelligence to selectively target the insurgency and the civilian supporters of the insurgency, which meant Russia resorted to mass violence against the Chechen population, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and only increased the insurgency’s strength. Thousands of Russian troops were additionally killed, although casualty counts from the wars are very inaccurate. What did happen is massive anti-war backlash within Russia. After two years, the Russian military had been humiliated by tiny Chechen forces and was ultimately forced to withdraw.

Now in the second war, Russia, adjusted its strategy by working with local pro-Russian Chechens, who had their own militia forces. This included the Kadyrov family and their Kadyrovtsy forces, who would eventually become the principal collaborator faction. Having Chechens fighting with Russia solved many of the problems of the first war, and instead of Russian troops dying, who had been drawn from all over the federation, eventually it would only be local Kadyrovtsy fighters who were handling the conflict. This meant that local ethnic minorities who were not official combatants were dying in the war, and these deaths minimally impacted Russian war support. Additionally, Chechen collaborators combined Russia's superior firepower with essential human intelligence on the ground to crush the insurgency. And the Kadyrovtsy and Chechnya, they were both an essential but an expendable force at the same time.

Now the Kadyrovtsy, they also engaged in an extensive course of violence to maintain order within their own ranks. Torture is routine and many thousands of Chechens have been forcefully conscripted into these forces. This is especially true of former Chechen insurgents. An infamous practice is a Kadyrovtsy kidnapping an insurgent’s family to force the insurgent to surrender and continuing to hold that family as a hostage. The threat-of-kin punishment against fighter families is a defining tactic of the Kadyrovtsy.

This is a very brutal regime in an impoverished area within Russia, and there's now a diaspora of several thousand Chechens who have fled the region. Kadyrovtsy fighters, however, know that if they desert, their families will be killed in retaliation. Coercive Kadyrovtsy behavior challenges some of the earlier writings on coercive violence and military inequality. I proposed in my paper that this is because of the unique regime within Chechnya.

Although Chechens undoubtedly face serious discrimination in Russian society today, the Kadyrov regime has also been given extreme autonomy to rule Chechnya. The Kadyrovtsy both have a great deal of flexibility to act as they please within Chechnya and use these kin-based reprisals to maintain order. However, at the same time, their deaths as minority ethnics really don't matter to Russian society at large or the decisionmakers in Moscow. At the end of the day, they’re still a very important collaborative force to Russian control of Chechnya.

Host

How did the Chechen wars relate to Ukraine?

Jones

The Chechen wars were the first major conflict in the former USSR, and there's a very strong similarity between Russian warriors in the Chechen wars and in Ukraine today. In both cases, the leadership in Moscow is claiming to be fighting for control of a rightful or historical Russian territory and also to be fighting in the interests of the local population.

In Chechnya, this involved a lot of rhetoric about fighting alleged neo-Nazis or Islamic extremists in the area, some of which was based in reality but a lot of which was mostly Russian propaganda. In Ukraine today, we're seeing, again, rhetoric about liberating ethnic Russians in the Donbass from the Ukrainian neo-Nazi government, but this is also a fabrication of Russian propaganda. Since Chechnya has been firmly under Russian control, Kadyrovtsy forces have been fighting in Ukraine for some time. They've been documented since at least 2014 with the initial Russian invasion of Crimea and the war on the Donbas. They've been present in Ukraine since 2014, with the war in the Donbas and the invasion of Crimea, but their presence has significantly expanded since 2022.

The Chechen forces that are fighting for Russia in Ukraine are in a central part of Russia's military. They are generally very devoted, very well motivated troops compared to some of the more demoralized Russian conscripts and separatist militias that we observed. What the Kadyrovtsy have been documented doing, specifically, is acting as blocking detachments for Russia. When Russia fights and relies on their demoralized, poorly armed and poorly trained militia men and conscripts, the Kadyrovtsy have been the forces that force these first wave troops into Ukrainian machine guns, effectively. They are corralling masses of Russians and Russian allies into the battle. This is a significant break with military inequality theory. Typically, and this is what Jason Lyle proposed in his book, is that core ethnic troops are the ones dictating orders to minority ethnic troops. Privileged groups give orders to the underprivileged groups.

What the Kadyrovtsy are doing in Ukraine is a reversal of this trend. They’re a minority ethnic force, and they are deploying coercive violence against the core ethnic groups. Again, I propose in my paper this is because of the unique regime in Chechnya and the unique relationship between Chechens and Russians. The Kadyrovtsy are a force that have experience applying coercive violence within their own ranks, and because of existing Russian-Chechen ethnic tensions, they're more than willing to beat, torture, and execute Russian conscripts; even though this causes significant Russian casualties, it ultimately helps the Russian army execute their strategy in Ukraine because it lets them extract maximum effectiveness from their poor-quality conscript troops.

Host

You offer strategic proposals in your article. Please share them with us.

Jones

So, Russia has fielded this two-tiered military force in Ukraine where Russia's core soldiers, it's crack contract troops, the airborne and armor forces who have great weapons equipment and training, and who are very reliable in combat and generally don't get demoralized. There's a second group of disposable Russian forces, who include the separatist militias from the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, the Wagner mercenary forces and other mercenary forces, and poor-quality Russian conscripts who are disproportionately drawn from poor, rural, and minority backgrounds in Russia. The most efficient use of Ukraine's military resources to fight this two-tiered military that they're facing is to target that first group the—competent head that's effectively leading the rest of this lumbering Russian body.

My strategic proposals include exploiting divisions in Russia's forces for further opportunities for Ukraine. Prigozhin’s Wagner rebellion this last summer demonstrated that a large portion of the Russian military is unhappy with Putin's direction of the war, and it seems very likely that other commanders could be enticed to desert with the correct offer of financial reward (as well as amnesties for war crimes and protections from Russian reprisals.) If this were to happen, that would bring essential military intelligence to Ukraine, as well as any possible military units that would desert with their commanders.

Individual Russian troops have also been demonstrated to be willing to desert. If Ukraine can facilitate this, then it lets them preserve their limited military resources for more determined Russian enemies. More determined enemies include the Kadyrovtsy, who need to be specifically targeted. This is a group that is forcing unwilling Russians into battle. Disrupting the strategy would seriously impact Russia's ability to conduct the war. The Kadyrovtsy are also what ensure Russia's control of Chechnya. If Chechen commanders or political leaders were to be killed and the group were to be shattered, this would destabilize the situation in Chechnya and effectively open a second front, potentially for Ukraine.

Ukraine's already proven that they're able to target Russian targets deep inland, such as in Moscow with drone strikes. Strikes on Grozny against critical infrastructure or military targets may also have a similar impact and force Kadyrovtsy units to redeploy home. However, it seems unlikely that another Chechen war or insurgency against Russia will occur at this stage. More realistically, though, there is a Chechen government in exile, which Ukraine recently recognized. This is a secular and anti-radical organization, which is committed to building a functional democracy within Chechnya. There has been a great focus on sending weapons and material aid to Ukraine, but there should also be an application of international diplomacy to build a coalition against Russian aggression.

Host

Do you have any concluding thoughts you'd like to share?

Jones

Within the military and in this academic idea, there's a risk of painting issues in very black and white terms and that troops are either part of the privileged “in” group or the discriminated “out” group. The Kadyrovtsy are an interesting example that demonstrates that these two groups can actually overlap. They're a minority force that's definitely less important than Russia's crack contract troops. But they're much more important than disposable Russian conscripts or Ukrainian militiamen. I think that this highlights a very important area for future research. For Ukraine, understanding Chechnya demonstrates how Russia's sitting government conducts war, and that helps characterize how Russia will act in the ongoing war in Ukraine.

In the First Chechen war, as well as in the earlier Soviet-Afghan War, Soviet and Russian forces became demoralized from acceptable casualties. They still retained plenty of military means and resources, but they lacked a coherent strategy for victory and a political will to fight, which prompted a withdrawal. So far in Ukraine, we're not seeing the signs of a comprehensive military victory from either side, but instead, a very slow grinding attrition. Ukraine's ongoing counteroffensive has been played up in Western media as a decisive final battle, but this was always an unrealistic characterization.

I think it's more likely that we'll witness a result similar to the Chechen wars in Ukraine, either like in the First Chechen War, Russia exhausts itself and withdrawals, or like in the Second Chechen War, Russia's enemy is exhausted and collapses, and a pro-Russian collaborator regime is installed. Helping Ukraine means recognizing that this conflict is not ending soon, that they'll need support and material to outlast Russia in a long war.

Host

Listeners, you can find the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 53, issue 3.

Wilson, thank you for making time to speak with me today.

Jones

Thank you for having me, Stephanie. I appreciate it.

Host

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Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 4-20 – Wilson Jones – The Chechen Kadyrovtsy’s Coercive Violence in Ukraine