The photo shows a fighter of «Akhmat» signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense. «Poperek batki v peklo» is an expression used by Cossacks in situations when someone rushes to a place where someone else has to go, thus overtaking him. This is the impression that the Chechen leadership is trying to create regarding the participation of its people in the so-called Private Military Company (PMC).
This applies not only to the formation of two new Kadyrovtsy battalions to be sent to the war, but also to the fact that a member of the volunteer battalion «Akhmat» visibly signed the contract with the Russian Defense Ministry, after the head of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, declared that the members of his formation would not sign such contracts. Thus, Ramzan Kadyrov and his men continue the conflict with Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner PMC, which seemed to have been resolved recently.
Earlier, against the backdrop of this conflict, Ramzan Kadyrov proposed to send his units «to fight the Nazis» in the Belgorod region, which, as we pointed out at the time, was a very unsuccessful step against the backdrop of the Russian nationalist rhetoric that Prigozhin and the Wagnerites began to use in this conflict. Especially considering the fact that they were not fighting Ukrainians, but Russian nationalists from the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), who sided with them.
And here is the confirmation of our correctness — yesterday one of the former fighters of the Wagner PMC, who had been captured earlier but did not want to return to Russia with the other prisoners in the exchange, joined the RVC. This indicates the proximity of the ideas of Russian nationalism and opposition among the fighters of the Wagner PMC. And therefore, the transfer of Kadyrovtsy to the Belgorod region is likely to intensify the processes of alienation of the Wagnerites from the existing Russian authorities and the growth of the influence of oppositional Russian nationalism and anti-Chechen sentiments.
Strategically, this turn of events is one of the most dangerous possibilities. After all, it would be one thing if the active forces of the Caucasus and the Volga region were forced to confront Russian nationalism tomorrow in order to liberate their lands from Russian colonial rule. In such a case, the truth and the support of many in the world will be on their side. And it is quite another thing if, on the contrary, Russian nationalists, who are currently fighting on different fronts but will unite tomorrow, manage to portray the Chechens as occupiers of Russian lands and claim that they are fighting for liberation from Chechen rule and that they need to come (again) to Chechnya and «restore order» there. In such a situation, on the contrary, there is a danger that potential allies of the Chechens in the struggle against Russian colonial rule and the Putin regime, if Chechnya is associated with Putin and its opponents with the opposition, will tend to support the latter.
Moreover, if all this happens against the backdrop of Russia’s defeat in the Russian-Ukrainian war and the beginning of a change of power there, it can be used to compensate for the effect of the humiliation of the Russians by the victory over a new old enemy.
In such scenarios, behavior based on the principle of «poperek batki v peklo» appears extremely short-sighted, dangerous and fraught with far-reaching consequences.