Chechen police given monthly quotas of up to 50 residents per district to send to war
Authorities in Russia’s Republic of Chechnya have begun ordering district police chiefs to round up 25–50 residents a month whom they can coerce into signing contracts with the Defence Ministry, Novaya Gazeta Europe has learned. Detainees are held at two holding centres before being sent to the front without training.
The campaign began after Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov ordered in October 2024 that “problem youth” be sent to fight in Ukraine. Kadyrov proposed giving offenders a choice: sign a military contract or face criminal charges. He put State Duma deputy Adam Delimkhanov in charge of overseeing recruitment for the newly formed regiment.
District police chiefs subsequently received monthly quotas requiring them to recruit between 25 and 50 “volunteers”, sources told Novaya Gazeta Europe and the human rights group Memorial.
According to the Telegram channel NIYCO, department heads and their overseers belong to a closed WhatsApp group, where they report on the number of people detained and discuss “shortfalls” and exceeding quotas. Captured men can reportedly be “resold” to colleagues in other police precincts so those officers can meet their own quotas. Chiefs who fail to hit their targets are fined.
Detainees are first brought to police stations, then transferred to holding centres in Sernovodskoye and Khankala.
The first centre is believed to be located at a military base of the Defence Ministry’s 78th Regiment. A captured serviceman told Ukrainian journalists that the regiment is roughly 90% forcibly mobilised residents of Chechnya. According to a Novaya Gazeta Europe source, losses have been so severe that the unit’s personnel have been completely replaced at least three times in three years.
The second centre is at a military base in Khankala, home to Russia’s 270th Motorised Rifle Regiment. Kadyrov had put the unit’s strength at 2,100 men; within just over a year, at least half its ranks had been filled with forcibly mobilised residents of the republic.
According to mobilised men and their relatives, conditions at both centres resemble those of a prison. Detainees are held under guard, fed poorly, and given almost no training. Uniforms and equipment are in short supply, so some are sent to the front in civilian clothes.
Relatives of one forcibly mobilised man said that in April, a newly arrived group of fighters came under shelling while lined up for roll call at a training ground in Donetsk region. They said more than 40 people were killed and 176 wounded. Sources at Memorial confirmed the unit suffered mass casualties.
Local residents say it was after this incident that a new wave of raids began in Chechnya. Earlier, between October 2024 and May 2025, Novaya Gazeta Europe documented 67 such operations in the republic, in which security forces sealed off towns and roads, stopped cars and pedestrians, and checked documents, insurance papers, and phones.
Grounds for detention and coercion into a contract can include getting in a fight, tinted car windows, lapsed insurance, “hair that’s too long”, unpaid utility bills or overdue grocery-store debts. People can also be sent to the front if their phones are found to contain subscriptions to opposition bloggers, posts critical of the authorities, or likes of “political” content on social media.
A Novaya Gazeta Europe source inside Chechnya’s Investigative Committee said a former colleague of his was detained over a “political” like. In exchange for his release, security officers demanded that two “volunteers” be brought in his place.
The man was ultimately freed for 1.2 million rubles (€13,400). After a single night in police custody, he had broken ribs and burn marks from electric shocks on his fingers. According to the source, a detainee’s release typically costs a family 300,000 rubles (€3,300) to 400,000 rubles (€4,450).