The son of a late Chechen Rustam Gelayev was killed during the shelling of a mosque in Aleppo by forces loyal to Assad earlier this month, according to a website. The report, citing unidentified sources in Chechnya, said Gelayev, 24, had joined a unit of Chechen volunteers fighting alongside Syrian insurgents.
Another website sympathetic to the insurgents said he had been killed when his unit "entered into a battle with superior forces of the Alawite regime ... presumably between Aug. 11 and Aug. 13."
Russian newspaper Kommersant, however, said a relative of Gelayev claimed he had been studying in Syria, had decided to leave because of the violence and was headed for Turkey when he was killed.
Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Kremlin-backed regional leader, said on Thursday that "no Russian citizens of Chechen nationality are fighting in Syria on any side", but indicated insurgents or Chechens living abroad could be doing so.
Kadyrov told reporters, "Chechens are not fighting in Syria - at least we can very responsibly say that about residents of the Chechen Republic. As for Gelayev ... and others like him, they have no homeland - they lost it long ago."
Ruslan Gelayev, was a prominent warlord who fought Russian federal forces in the two post-Soviet separatist wars in the 1990s and early 2000s in Chechnya. He was killed in a gun battle with Russian border guards on the frontier with Georgia in 2004.