“They pointed at some woman and said I’d been caught red-handed”: How Chechen security services honeytrap men into going to war
theins.ru
Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov brags about sending tens of thousands of volunteers to fight in Ukraine. In reality, his security forces blackmail and intimidate locals into signing military contracts. Forced recruitment in the Kadyrovite republic began in the summer of 2022 with fabricated “terrorism” cases, kidnapped relatives, and threats to “dishonor” female relatives. A new popular technique is the use of “honeytraps.” Underage girls or married women are tasked with approaching men to collect compromising material. The men are then kidnapped and threatened with public exposure if they do not sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense. Some of the women used in these operations are also coerced. The Insider examined how Chechen security forces lure and intimidate potential soldiers and what other illegal enlistment schemes are being used in the republic.

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Kadyrov stated that over the three and a half years of the invasion, Chechnya had sent 60,000 fighters, including 22,000 “volunteers,” into Ukraine.

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Although these figures are likely overstated — with the count based not on individual people, but on renewed contracts, as Novaya Europe notes — Chechen units still need regular reinforcements. As a result, the hunt for so-called “volunteers” has been an ongoing process in the republic.

“Coercion to sign contracts began at the end of 2022. We started noticing that in every district of Chechnya, directives were issued specifically to search for so-called ‘targets,’” says Said-Ali Abubakirov, head of the political opposition movement NIYSO. According to Abubakirov, in leaked group chats obtained by the opposition, security agents referred to future volunteers as “candidates.”

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Police stations, traffic police regiments, and other units were instructed to recruit 25 to 50 “volunteers” each. Some agencies even exceeded these quotas, NIYSO confirms. According to the activists, law enforcement officers used group chats to trade potential recruits among themselves.

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According to human rights activists, security personnel used group chats to trade potential recruits among themselves.

“They literally sell people there: ‘I have a few people for 100,000 rubles, a few for 200,000…’ Even the chiefs argue among themselves: ‘how come our department didn’t find a single guy in a day, or a week?’ They have their own regulations, their own quotas to meet. And when they exceed the quota, they start treating it as a business, literally selling extra people. I saw it in so many words: ‘I found a candidate. I can sell him to another officer so he can meet his quota.’ Total madness.”

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