These are some of the most feared soldiers in Russia. They're called the Kadyrovsi. And they kidnap, torture, or murder anyone deemed a threat by their leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. He's the dictator of Chechnya, a tiny semi-autonomous republic in southern Russia, and Vladimir Putin's most loyal ally.
In 2022, when Putin invaded Ukraine, he needed Kadyrov's help. So Kadyrov gathered his Kadyrovsi, and happily obliged. But Kadyrov also commands the loyalty of a different kind of fighter mixed martial arts fighters.
Over the last decade, Kadyrov has built his own influential MMA operation. The problem now is some of those men are in this video preparing to march off to Putin's war in Ukraine. This story feels like it is straight out of a movie. The relationship between Kadyrov's regime, his government, his militia, and mixed martial arts is indisputable. So what exactly is Kadyrov using MMA for?
Chechens are famous for their warrior culture, something they fostered over centuries of fighting largely against Russia. They resisted rule by the Russian Empire starting in the 18th century, and they were persecuted under the Soviet Union in the 20th. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Chechnya was kept inside the new Russian Federation. But many Chechens began to fight for independence.
Ramzan Kadyrov's father, Akhmad Kadyrov, was one of them. He led a militia called the Katerovsi. In 1994, when Russia invaded Chechnya, Kadyrov and his militia helped repel them.
In 1999, Russia returned, but this time, Kadyrov didn't fight back. He was a devout Muslim, like most Chechens, but he opposed extremist fundamentalist fighters that were joining the resistance. The Russians convinced him to switch sides, and he and his men helped it reconquer Chechnya. After the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin put Ahmad in charge of Chechnya. But in less than a year, Chechen insurgents assassinated him.
The Chechen warrior culture was still alive and threatened to drag Russia into a third war. So Putin put Ahmed's son Ramzan Kadyrov in power and sent him billions of dollars. Kadyrov used it to rebuild capital Grozny into a modern city and turn his Katarovsky into a heavily armed private militia. Then like many dictators before him, Kadyrov would use this sport to change Chechen culture to serve him. Now if you've been a subscriber for Search Party for a while, you know that this is a major theme here.
Politicians have always used sports for their own ends. But I've yet to cover an example of them using it so directly as what's happening right now in Chechnya. For this story, I scoured websites and social media from Chechnya, Russia, and dozens of other countries. But I was reminded that my information was safe and secure thanks to my Incogni subscription.
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Go to incogni.com slash searchparty and use the code SEARCHPARTY you'll get 60% off an Incogni plan. Thanks again to Incogni for sponsoring us. And I'll take you back to the episode. Like the Chechens, several other ethnic groups in the Caucasus have a similar warrior culture.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise that they all share a passion for combat sports, particularly wrestling. Some of the best wrestlers in history come from this region. Around 2015, Kadyrov brought a new combat sport to Chechnya.
Hello ladies and gentlemen, you are about to see something that you have never seen before, the ultimate fighting challenge. The birth of modern MMA is often said to be 1993, when the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, was established. It combined elements from several combat sports, like the striking of kickboxing to the grappling of wrestling, and quickly became extremely popular. 2015 in particular was the time period where everybody wanted a piece of mixed martial arts, so it really was not surprising at all that Kadyrov took that chance as well.
You might recognize Kareem. I interviewed him last year about Saudi Arabia's sport-washing master plan. But he's best known for being one of the first journalists to investigate what Kadyrov saw in MMA.
MMA is still the newest of these sports. It helps incorporate this idea that we are badasses, we are supreme warriors. And that's a great mentality to instill into people that you're trying to completely re-socialize. Around 2015, Kadyrov established Chechnya's first MMA gym and named it Fight Club Ahmed after his father.
And he soon grew it into a pipeline for developing talented fighters. On the first level, thousands of Chechen boys joined the gym and learned to fight. The most talented are signed to an official team roster, where Kadyrov pays them to train and represent his gym in competitions. He also began signing caucus-born professional fighters to his team. Some of them eventually made it into the UFC, the pinnacle of MMA.
Kadyrov began lavishing these fighters with gifts in exchange for their loyalty. He's given his favorite, a Chechen-born superstar named Kamzat Shemayev, cars, homes, and even set him up with a wife. He wanted to make it clear that if you represent me and if you do well, I'm going to change your life forever. At the same time, Kadyrov began building a reputation for himself as an influential figure of the sport by attending UFC matches and appearing with celebrities.
Kadyrov was replacing the traditional Chechen warrior who fought for independence with Chechen MMA athletes who fought for him. and creating a new class at the top of Chechen society. Forget about the old hierarchies. There was an entirely new class of individuals being elevated in Chechen society based primarily on their prowess as mixed martial arts athletes and loyalty to him and, of course, his boss. Now, you might be thinking this is just classic sports washing.
But what Karim and others have uncovered is that this pipeline is actually being used to create real hard power as well. And that's what's so new about it. And it's what brings us back to the men in this video.
This is Abu Zayed Vizmuradov, aka Patriot. He's on this stage because he's the top commander of the Katarovsi. Since taking power, Kadyrov has expanded the Katarovsi into a collection of many paramilitary units, using them to murder, torture, and detain citizens, journalists, and even Chechens abroad.
This includes the arrest and torture of hundreds of gay Chechen men in 2017. Vizmuradov leads at least two Katarovsi units. But it's only one of his jobs. He's also the head of Fight Club Ahmed.
And it's not a coincidence. I don't think anything is a coincidence when it comes to Ramzan Kadyrov, Sam. Kadyrov is only interested in a select few people to emerge from Ahmed MMA who will go on to represent him for that form of state's prestige. Absolutely everybody else is fair game. Fair game to be recruited.
Over the last few years, Kadyrov's regime has begun funneling men from Fight Club Ahmed into the Kedarov scene. using MMA to fuel his private army. And he's not keeping it a secret. Kadyrov frequently promotes an Ahmed fighter named Beslan Ushakov because he's also a special forces soldier.
And this man with the machine gun is a former UFC fighter who Kadyrov eventually made deputy prime minister of sport and youth culture. These men represent what Kadyrov believes is an ideal Chechen man. Now what Kadyrov was really saying was, this is a perfect Chechen for me.
Not only is he willing to fight for me on the battlefield, but he is successfully competing for me in the cage as well. Kadyrov's turning Chechnya's young fighters into loyal soldiers that will help him stay in power and do Vladimir Putin's dirty work abroad. In the 2010s, Putin began deploying the Kadyrovsky to fight alongside the Russian military in Syria and Ukraine.
In 2022, he assigned them to join the initial assault on Ukraine's capital, Kiev. And according to the Ukrainian government, ordered them to assassinate the Ukrainian president, which they failed to do. But the Katarovsky also fought in the bloody siege of Mariupol and are accused of committing war crimes in Bucha. Recent reporting claims the Katarovsky are now in charge of disciplining, torturing, and even executing unmotivated and retreating Russian troops. Yes, using them as a police force based on their reputation alone makes a lot of sense.
That's where they have their experience. One Katarovsky unit is in charge of holding the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia. In 2023, Al Jazeera released one of their videos and traced this man to an article that identifies him as Mahmoud Koussiev, a former MMA fighter pictured here wearing a Fight Club Ahmed jersey.
As more MMA fighters end up in the Kadyrovski, the more they put the sport in a difficult position. In 2017, the US began placing economic sanctions that banned its citizens from doing business with Kadyrov, the Kadyrovski, and Ahmed MMA. But fighters linked to Kadyrov continue to appear in the UFC. which is based in the U.S.
The UFC claims that all its fighters are independent contractors and denies any contractual relationship with Kadyrov or any of his associates under sanctions. But as the loud comes at Shimaev to fight in Las Vegas in 2022, Abu Dhabi in 2023, and again this October, here he is celebrating after the match with none other than Ramzan Kadyrov. All it did was attempt to circumvent those bans and sanctions by having them compete elsewhere.
that Ramzan Kadyrov is a stain on the sport and should be eradicated from the sport entirely. The UFC, unfortunately, does not seem to think so. Kadyrov found a way to use a sport, not just for changing a culture or building a reputation, but as a tool for real violence. And authoritarians everywhere can see how well it's working.
We will continue to see authoritarians involve themselves in combat sports, no doubt about it. All right, thanks for watching. If you haven't subscribed to Search Party, now is your chance. We cover sports and geopolitics. This is the exact kind of story that I like.
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