Temirlan Eskerkhanov in court in Moscow, 27 June 2017. Photo: Sergey Karpukhin / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA
Dozens of Chechen prisoners were granted early release from Russian prisons last year to fight in Ukraine due to the lobbying efforts of Chechen autocrat Ramzan Kadyrov, a source in the Chechen Interior Ministry has told Novaya Europe.
The information follows reports that Temirlan Eskerkhanov, one of the men convicted of involvement in the 2015 murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, was granted early release from prison earlier this year after signing a contract with Russia’s Defence Ministry to fight in Ukraine.
The source said the Defence Ministry had previously recruited relatively few Chechens but this changed in December, since when about 200 Chechens convicted of non-terror offences have been released to go to fight in Ukraine.
Denying reports that Eskerkhanov was in an assault unit, the source said that he had been stationed in the Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol since June 2022. Another source told Novaya Europe that it had been while Eskerkhanov made a visit to his hometown in Chechnya last month that his status as a free man had been confirmed.
The Interior Ministry source also told Novaya Europe that Zaur Dadayev, one of the four other men convicted of Nemtsov’s murder, may soon be granted early release from prison in the same manner.
“Kadyrov is like Putin in that way. They don’t abandon their killers,” the source continued, referring to Putin’s determination to negotiate the release of FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany, but whose release was ultimately agreed as part of the largest ever prisoner exchange between Russia and the West on 1 August.
