RUSSIA-FRANCE Controversy over the Chechen fighters of the French team

The team that participated in the European Championship consisted solely of refugees from Chechnya. These are people who fled with their families at the time of Putin’s war against Chechen separatists. In sport it is already normal for national teams to be multi-ethnic. Moscow attacks.

Moscow () – A strange case of ethnic politics is shaking the sports world: the reaction to the composition of the French youth wrestling team for the 2023 European Championships, in which only athletes of Chechen ethnicity appeared. In Russia, this fact has caused great controversy, since as a result of international sanctions all Russian athletes are excluded from competitions. So some wonder where these competitive fighting Chechen refugees came from.

According to official reports, the group arose after the flight of Chechens during the civil war in the early 2000s. In Bucharest, from March 13 to 19, six fighters with unequivocal names competed without much success in different categories to defend the colors from France: Adam Bibulatov, Khamzat Arsamerzuev, Mukhammad-Amin Sangariev, Magamed Deliev, Rakhim Magamadov and Adlan Viskhanov. the french newspaper Sports Express he also wondered: “How is it possible that the great Russian fighters are left out and the entire French team is made up of Chechens?”

A prominent member of the Chechen diaspora in France, Movladi Abdulaev, an athlete, judge and martial arts coach who has lived in Paris since 2003, maintains that the presence of foreign athletes in other countries is already common, even though the team of French fighters is really an exception. “It is not uncommon to see Caucasians like Dagestanis or Ossetinians, or even Siberian Jakutis in Western teams… We have Chechen legionnaires in teams from Albania, Romania, Bulgaria and other countries, in France the situation is unique because the whole team is made up of Chechens, but they were all born here, or have resided here since their earliest childhood.

One of the fighters, Rakhim Magamadov, was born in Gudermes, in Chechnya, and in statements to the French magazine le dépêche he said he does not remember anything from his early years in the Caucasus. His family escaped from there in 2008, when he was only four years old and Putinist Russia was concluding its “anti-terrorist operation.”

“I am very proud to be a Chechen,” says Rakhim. “When I was 6 years old, my father enrolled me in the wrestling club in Montalbano, near Nice. Actually, I wanted to play football, but we are Chechens, in our family it is either wrestling or nothing.” The parents of multi-medal winner Adlan Viskhanov also fled Grozny in 2008 due to his mother’s illness and “the uncertain situation in Russia”.

Speaking to Match TV, the president of the Russian Wrestling Federation, Mikhail Mamiašvili, said that “these are people from France, who have never been and never would have been part of the Russian national team… French people go around in gay parades , at least the Chechens there take care of men’s things.” His statements caused very heated reactions in the martial arts environment.

Abdulaev himself commented that “the Russian president of the federation came to France many times, and he must have realized that very few French people go to gay parades…it is not uncommon to hear such rude jokes from sportsmen, but from Mamiašvili I did not expect”.

Russian journalist and political scientist Ivan Preobražensky noted in an interview with Kavkaz.Realii that “no official or sports commentator in Russia can openly admit today that tens of thousands of Chechens are in Europe, due to the long war against the Chechen people”, and the French wrestling team was a flagrant whistle blower of a very important situation , about which everyone is silent.

The Chechen exodus affected huge numbers of people after the two post-Soviet wars, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is pushing many more to leave the Caucasian territory.

Abdulaev bitterly concludes: “If sport were completely decoupled from politics, then I would be against the exclusion of any athlete from competitions, except those who make explicit propaganda for war, racism and inter-ethnic hatred. But in In reality, sport is always mixed with politics, and you have to resign yourself to it”.