| AoS at 17:00 CT -- 3dc, please embed links. I don't have time to do it now, but embedding the links makes the copy clean and allows readers to go there directly. Thank you. |
Chechens confirm their brand worldwide every year. Unfortunately, it is not a brand of high fashion, or new direction in art or science. Chechens are regularly depicted as the bad guys prepared to fight anywhere in the world. The theme of the Russian mafia in Hollywood movies has given way to the Chechen mafia and Chechen jihadists--a Chechen criminal world that threatens American interests around the globe (http://www.militaryparitet.com/perevodnie/data/ic_perevodnie/2256/).
Chechens have also surfaced in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. News agencies have provided links to video reports purporting to show the presence of Chechens among the unidentified armed groups in eastern Ukraine. Sometimes, the uninformed opinion of a lay person looking outside from his car (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAPe02IXBQI) is considered sufficient to figure out that the Chechens are kadyrovtsy, meaning those Chechens who are loyalists of Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian Moscow-backed Chechen leader.
The spokesman for the Ukrainian anti-terrorist operation, Vladislav Seleznev, confirmed that people of Caucasian appearance are among the militants fighting in eastern Ukraine. "We have operative information about many people of Caucasian appearance among the militants" (http://www.ukrinform.ua/rus/news/na_donbasse_deystvuyut_kavkaztsi___seleznev_1637090). One of the videos shows a person who states on camera that he and the other armed men around him are Chechens, Afghans, Muslims who came to eastern Ukraine "to protect Russia, to protect Russians and to protect the interests of this country" (http://inforesist.org/video-batalon-vostok-daet-intervyu/).
The clearest apparent confirmation of the presence of Chechens in the conflict came in a CNN report in Donetsk. Two people replied to the reporter's question that they were from Chechnya and were kadyrovtsy. They refused to say what unit they were from, but nodded affirmatively when the reporter suggested that they were with the Russian interior ministry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAAqqBIRxIY).