Human rights defenders alarmed by reports about kidnappings of Chechen residents to be sent to SMO

In Chechnya, people who have recently been released from prison are being kidnapped in order to then be forcibly sent to the special military operation zone in Ukraine, a local resident says. Reports about the kidnappings of former prisoners are an alarming signal indicating that the flow of volunteers in Chechnya has dried up, human rights defenders note.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that five citizens of Azerbaijan were detained in Chechnya. One of them claimed that they were being tortured and forced to go to the special military operation (SMO) zone. The Azerbaijani authorities sent a note to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).

A message that several dozen people recently released from prison in Chechnya were kidnapped to be sent to the SMO zone has been received by the SMS-service of the “Caucasian Knot”. According to a source’s information, law enforcers detained about 80 people in Grozny.

There are almost no volunteers left in Chechnya, so the authorities may try to use such methods to send people to the special military operation, believes Svetlana Gannushkina*, the chair of the “Civic Assistance” Committee**.

Messages about people being kidnapped to be sent to the special military operation began to come after the Vladimir Putin’s decision to increase the size of the Russian Army by 180,000 people, lawyer Artyom Mugunyants notes.

“In Chechnya, from the first days [of the special military operation], there was a shortage of people willing to participate in it, and most of them were forced to go there. The longer this conflict drags on, the harder it is to recruit people there,” notes a human rights defender from the “Memorial” Centre for Human Rights Defence (CHRD)***.

*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of foreign agents.

**On April 20, 2015, information appeared on the website of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) of the Russian Federation that the “Civic Assistance” Committee was included in the list of foreign agents.

***As reported on the website of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the reason for including on March 1, 2024, the unregistered “Memorial” Centre for Human Rights Defence (CHRD) into the register of foreign agents was the spread of “inaccurate information aimed at creating a negative image of the Russian Federation, as well as the Russian Armed Forces.”