Chechen commander Isa Munajev was the first soldier I interviewed last fall when I came over as a Canadian freelance reporter to cover Russia’s war against Ukraine in the eastern Donbas.
The man had class and courage, and it saddens me greatly to learn of his demise. I feel somewhat like Achilles did when he learned of the death of his friend Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad. I still hold out hopes the media reports are wrong. Munajev’s picture, however, is there in the Feb. 3 online edition of Denmark’s English language The Local: “Danish Chechen dies fighting in Ukraine.”
In Chechnya he fought the Russians in those ugly wars of the 1990s and then moved to Denmark in 2007, where he made a new life with his wife and four children as a boxing instructor in the city of Birkerod.
But allow me to share some personal memories of the man. It was late — about 11 p.m. on Oct. 9 — when the van I was traveling in showed up at the location of Munajev’s Chechen volunteer battalion near the city of Dnipropetrovsk.
Despite the hour, we were greeted warmly and given beds and tea. The last thing I expected was the battalion leader to ask to be interviewed then, near midnight, when he was tired after a busy day. Surprised, I quickly gathered my thoughts and notebook and pen.
He entered the large tent with a regal bearing, the likes of which I’ve seen only once before, in the Western Sahara in 1987 when I met a Polisario commander of similar stature in the stark gritty wilderness of that great desert. Within minutes a goat had been slaughtered and was put to the boil, and we feasted, the man’s soldiers showing great deference. Well, he and Munajev might have been cut from the same bolt of cloth.
The Chechen commander also had an aura of power about him. He extended a strong hand and welcomed us in Russian. With me were my interpreter and friend Ievgenii Sinielnikov, a radio man from Belarus named Arkady Nesterenko, Kyiv volunteers Valerii Subota and Sergey Golub who were dropping off food and clothing, and a friend of the commander, Helena Denisenko, who I understand made the visit with the commander possible at all. Thank you Helena.
We met in the lighted tent with a number of armed soldiers and others present, and two wood stoves keeping us warm. The mood was upbeat, but also a little bit tense. How would the interviews proceed? Little Arkady would talk to him also, after myself.
Munajev spoke easily, articulately, hauntingly, explaining that the fighters in his volunteer battalion (none were paid, at least at that time) were Chechens from all over Europe. They came because they had experienced loss at the hands of the Russian army before, in their homeland, and didn’t want the “fine Ukrainian people” to similarly suffer.
“Russian soldiers killed my daughter, 2, my sister, my father – he was paralyzed and they beat him to death,” he said. “He died on the fifth day. They also killed my father-in-law. My brother-in-law’s wife was burned to death. Yet my family did not suffer as much as others. That’s what Russians did to us. They will do the same things to Ukrainians.”
No, I can’t verify these deaths. But I do know, having interviewed Chechen refugees in Georgia in 2000 and done other research, that despicable things took place in Chechnya that should never happen to human beings. The Chechen refugees I met then in that little Georgian village were tough, weary, stalwart men and women who had just arrived by foot across the Caucuses Mountains, through snow and cold and the deadly attacks of Russian jet fighters which had strafed them and terrified them all, the children especially. Those who were killed were carried on the backs of the men to be buried in the village where their friends and relations lived, near the Chechen border.
And Munajev was bitter. “When the Chechen people said, “We are getting killed!” the West said it was an internal issue in Russia. What would you do if your family were under threat? We took a stand.”
And that is what brought him back to war from his peaceful domestic life in Denmark. “If we don’t stop Russia, it will go further. I am not a fundamentalist Muslim. I am united with Ukrainians. We are regular officers of the Ukrainian army.”
He stressed that he and his men were fighting for the freedom of Ukrainians, and that others are also at risk of the Russian bear. Belarus and Kazakhstan are under strong Russian influence, he said, while Estonia and Latvia are at risk of being annexed.
“I will go to any territory where Russia would invade. The world should understand that Russia will not stop here at Ukraine,” he said, describing President Vladimir Putin as a combination of Hitler and Stalin. “Armed force is the only way to stop Putin.”
At the time of the interview a United Nations report outlined the abuses taking place in the self-declared rebel republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – kidnappings, beatings, theft, gang rapes, murders. I had also been told of religious persecution by a Protestant Ukrainian who had fled after being shot at and his home stolen by rebels, who are Russian Orthodox. This I told Munajev.
“Yes, this is true,” he said. “I have been here for two months and the same things happened in Chechnya. I hope the world community will stand up to this devil Putin. We can defeat him only together. We live in the 21st century and Ukraine has chosen its own path of a free life. Ukrainians have proven this goal by sacrificing their lives at Maidan.”
He told me the official name of his group was International Peacekeepers Battalion. It held men from England, Denmark, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, America and even had, I was told, one Canadian of Chechen descent.
Would he welcome Canada and the United States into the fight? I asked.
“With pleasure. It would be unity of the civilized world against the barbarian Putin,” he said. “It would be a strong spiritual presence.”
A lot of people wanted to join his battalion, he said, including about 50 Ukrainians, but they lacked the space to accommodate them.
The interviews wrapped up about 12:30 a.m. Then he permitted us to take pictures. The one I like best is a bit hazy, but it shows us both in the tent, with weak light, both relaxed.
Next morning about 7, I was up and writing a story when two loud bangs broke the morning silence, spurring soldiers to scramble from our tent in a flurry of shirts and pants and haste. I kept working, figuring it was a couple of mortar rounds fired in a training exercise.
When Munajev came in and saw me typing away, he asked, “Aren’t you afraid?” I said no and smiled. We chatted more after that. Turned out it was a training exercise.
Breakfast beckoned. It was rice with tomato sauce and some meat and spices, very tasty. “You see,” said the cook, “this is the food the volunteers brought to us last night.” And he smiled broadly.
Then Munajev took me out to a nearby field where he demonstrated the use of his Makarov pistol and allowed me to fire a round. We took some more pictures. One of his targets was a poster of Putin. We had an easy rapport which I had hoped to renew at some later date. But that won’t happen now. At least not here.
“Ukrainians are kind and wonderful people,” he said. “If Ukraine is left alone with Russia it will be hard for us (soldiers and local people). I hope the world will find out the truth: it’s a war, an open war against the Ukrainian nation and state.”
Ukrainians are fighting an “anti-terrorist operation” to defend their territory. But both sides have killed civilians with their shelling. Both sides have committed errors and indignities that would have best been left undone. This is the nature of war. Both sides have lost good men and women whose demise has weakened the greater human fabric.
A truce and peace plan monitored by international troops is necessary to stop the carnage and prevent further waste and escalation. Painful compromise is called for. Neither side can afford this war, nor can the world afford to see an escalation and wider confrontation.
Unlike the Iliad, there is no assembly of gods here to intervene, no Zeus or Apollo or Athene to pluck men from the jaws of death or implant in their minds the words of peace. We appear to be on our own.
But as the civilian and military death toll mounts to near or beyond 6,000 in the first major East-West clash in decades, one must ask: does the world fully grasp the gravity of this conflict?
Munajev did. But now he’s dead.
Brad Bird is a Canadian journalist covering Russia’s war against Ukraine.
