Russia‘s Chechen Muslim population should carry “a great jihad” against Europe in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine, a top Kremlin ally has urged.
“Remember the rally in Grozny against the cartoons of our beloved Prophet?” Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on social media. “The same forces that insulted the best of people are now fighting against us in Ukraine. … The protesters in Grozny threatened to go to Europe and deal with the offenders. Where are these heroes?”
Kadyrov, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, issued that call as Russian troops continue to sustain heavy losses in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in eastern and southern Ukraine. And his branding of the war as a “jihad” dovetailed with a broader Russian attempt to frame the war in religious terms, as Putin’s team has begun to portray the Ukrainian government and its Western supporters as a “satanic” force.
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“I believe that with the continuation of the special military operation, it is becoming increasingly urgent to carry out the de-Satanization of Ukraine,” Russian Security Council Assistant Secretary Aleksey Pavlov said Tuesday.
Kadyrov acknowledged that he is “deeply dissatisfied with today’s situation,” but he insisted on his call to arms.
“This is a great jihad everyone should take part in,” he said.
That appeal, like the awards and promotions that Putin has given to Kadyrov and other Chechen officials, underscores how Putin’s relationship with Chechnya has changed over the year. Putin consolidated power in the Kremlin by launching a war in Chechnya, which he justified by blaming Chechen terrorists for a series of apartment bombings now widely perceived as having been orchestrated by Putin’s associates in the FSB.
Kadyrov would have a difficult time organizing a terrorist attack in Western societies, according to a senior Western official. “Even if there are some [Chechens] somewhere in Europe, then they are closely monitored,” an ambassador to NATO told the Washington Examiner.
The Chechen and Kremlin rhetoric leans into Putin’s claim that “Western elites … are coming to resemble a ‘religion in reverse’ — pure Satanism,” an allegation he made just as he signed documents formalizing his claim to annex several partially occupied Ukrainian territories into the Russian state.
“Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’” Putin said. “These poisonous fruits are already obvious to people and not only in our country, but also in all countries, including many people in the West itself.”
Putin has invoked the common religious tradition of the Orthodox Christians in Russia and Ukraine for years, but his attempt this year to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has drawn sharp condemnations from the preeminent global Orthodox leader in Istanbul and has driven many Ukrainian churches to cut ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.
“In the past few days, the Russian Federation has significantly stepped up the execution of acts of terror and genocide against the civilian population of Ukraine, using a wide and large arsenal of missile armaments,” the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations wrote last week. “More than two hundred cruise missiles and Iranian-made kamikaze drones hit peaceful Ukrainian cities and villages, which cannot be justified by military necessity.”
That organization, which referred to Putin as an “insidious and unprincipled enemy,” includes both the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — the institution that continues to be under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“All who participate in these brutal attacks on peaceful cities, both the leaders who give orders and the direct executors, as well as all who justify acts of inhuman cruelty, must know that they will be answered before the Almighty God and punished for their crimes,” the Ukrainian religious leaders also said earlier in October.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill is a loyal supporter of Putin and the war, but Western leaders hope that religious institutions will be able to apply pressure on the Kremlin.
“We know well how the Orthodox religion today is being manipulated by those in power in Russia to justify their actions,” French President Emmanuel Macron said last week. “Resistance is needed here.”
The Kremlin, however, appears keen to brand the war as a kind of joint Orthodox-Muslim war against the West. Pavlov, the Russian Security Council official, invoked Kadyrov and the Chechen leaders call for the “complete de-Shaitanisation” of Ukraine. (Shaitan, in some Islamic mythology, is a name for demonic spirits.)
“Every region and Ukraine as a whole is our Russian territory,” Kadyrov said. “I give you my word: We’ll attack them every day. We won’t take these shaitans prisoner. We’ll burn them. We won’t stop anywhere.”
The message, truculent though it is, points to the lack of manpower bedeviling the Russian military as their casualties mount.
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“Kadyrov is the most aggressive in the public space, but he is also losing his fighters,” the NATO ambassador said. “Kadyrov sends his guys to the front, to Ukraine, and there are being killed in big amounts.”
