RUSSIA Alaudinov, the new Chechen Prigozhin

The commander of the Akhmat battalion continually posts videos and messages to his 300,000 followers. Since the fighting in Kursk began, his popularity in Russia has grown steadily and he is often invited to war propaganda talk shows.

Moscow () – Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat battalion, 51, is well known in the war chronicles of the past two and a half years as one of the main protagonists of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As head of the Kadyrovtsy, the most loyal fighters of the head of the Grozny republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, he is considered the “armed wing” of the president, who, due to his health conditions, is often given the option of possible successors, and among them Alaudinov is one of the most repeated names.

For some time now, his role as the leader of the “Chechen butchers” seems to be expanding to ever more complex dimensions, especially in the context of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kursk region, where Alaudinov was sent to organize the defense and the recapture of the villages that have come under Kiev’s control. Alaudinov has formally resigned from the army, although he retains command of Akhmat, and in early September he posed a provocative question on his Telegram channel: “Why is the enemy still in the Kursk region?”, implying that the blame lies with the ineptitude of the other military leaders. The Chechen general follows in the footsteps of the late Wagner company chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had turned against the Russian army’s top brass, whom he considered imbeciles.

In his messages, Alaudinov lists the Ukrainian forces deployed in Kursk (200 tanks, 400 armoured vehicles, 12,000 soldiers at the start), speaking against the background of the green flag with the gold star of the battalion dedicated to Akhmat Kadyrov – former Chechen president victim of an assassination attempt and father of the current president – ​​concluding that “all this must be destroyed and exterminated as soon as possible”. Since the fighting in Kursk began, he has been the main public source of information about what was happening, and he continually posts videos and messages to his 300,000 followers; they all quote him and he is increasingly invited to war propaganda talk shows.

His increasingly active presence is not limited to reporting on what is happening in the war, and the media have spread the hypothesis that the Kremlin is preparing him to replace Kadyrov, a few years younger than him but with an increasingly uncertain future, even though the Chechen president continues to boast of frequent “recoveries” from his poor health and there is no doubt that he is capable of staying in his post. The commander of the Akhmat was awarded the “Hero of Russia” title in April and was appointed deputy head of the administration for military-political affairs of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, resigning from the occupation body of the Ukrainian region of Lugansk.

The new hero comes from a family wiped out in the Chechen war at the beginning of Putin’s regime, belonging to the “federalist” – i.e. pro-Russian – wing of the Caucasian republic, even more so than Kadyrov himself. After a rapid career, he became a member of the Grozny government, only to fall into the shadows around 2020, retiring to private life in Moscow. The invasion of Ukraine offered him the opportunity to redeem himself and he gathered fighters not only from Chechnya but from all over Russia into the Akhmat, initially as a group of volunteers, but later integrated into the Russian army in June 2023, immediately after the Prigozhin uprising.

In his new role as a military and media protagonist on the Kursk front, Alaudinov is addressing a wider audience, while trying to involve as many volunteers as possible in the mobilization. Many Russians are nostalgic for an unorthodox and popular commander like the head of the Wagner company, and the question is to what extent the new Chechen idol of the most extreme militarists acts on his own, on behalf of Grozny or Moscow, or whether the Kremlin considers it necessary to have a pawn who can play different roles in the war strategies.