Public domain, map of Chechnya region, 1856, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In Soldiers Make Secret Plot to ‘Destroy’ Putin’s Empire from Within, The Daily Beast reports on growing opposition to Putin at the periphery of the Russian Empire, specifically, in Chechnya.  Excerpt:

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine—The horrors of Ukraine are an eerily familiar sight for Maga, a 30-year-old Chechen fighter who spoke with The Daily Beast using his codename.

“The same torture, the same mass graves… the things the Russians are doing in Ukraine, they were doing back in Chechnya,” Maga told The Daily Beast from his unit’s hideout in eastern Ukraine last month. “They just come and destroy everyone who could be against their power.”

Having fought first to defend Kyiv—and then in the battles for the liberation of the Kharkiv region—Maga said the atrocities he has seen in Putin’s invasion match stories told by his relatives, who fought in the wars for Chechen independence from the Russian Federation in the 1990s.

While much of the world was shocked by the bloody atrocities committed by Putin’s forces in cities like Mariupol and Bucha, for many Chechens none of this came as a surprise.

Now, this shared trauma appears to have formed a bond between Chechens who have flocked to Ukraine to fight against Putin’s invasion and their new Ukrainian comrades, who have agreed that once the war is finished here, they will travel to fight for a free Chechnya.

…

Troops from these ethnic minority regions have made up the bulk of Russian cannon fodder in this war, with one BBC analysis estimating that men from the Muslim-majority region of Dagestan had died at 10 times the rate of those from Moscow. Some critics claim this is a direct result of a cynical strategy from Putin: avoiding domestic backlash by having ethnic minorities bear the brunt of the meat grinder. “The Russians won’t actually go and fight themselves,” Maga said

Glory to Ukraine!