Meet the Chechen battalion joining Ukraine to fight Russia — and fellow Chechens

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/05/ [login to see] /chechens-ukraine-russia
Mansur was 13 when Russian soldiers destroyed his village of Samashki during Chechnya's first war for independence against Russia.

Wielding flamethrowers, the Russians burned Mansur's neighbors alive in their homes, threw grenades into basements and executed men. Four years later, a truce disintegrated, and Mansur was back at war. He says he was never the same after.

"Russia ruined everything I had. I grew up with war, and the war shaped me in all respects," Mansur, 40, says matter-of-factly.

Mansur is one of more than 200,000 Chechens who fled to Turkey and Europe throughout the 2000s during a second war between Russian federal forces and fighters in Chechnya, a republic in far southern Russia.