Chechen commander claims Russian servicemen committed over 180 crimes in Kursk region

Russian servicemen have committed at least 187 crimes in the country’s southwestern Kursk region amid the ongoing Ukrainian incursion, a Chechen commander said on Wednesday while refuting claims that Chechen fighters had exhibited “inappropriate behaviour” in the region, independent media outlet Agentstvo reported.

Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the Akhmat special forces battalion, currently deployed in the Kursk region, said in an interview with pro-war blogger Maxim Kalashikov that he had approached the head of the Kursk region Interior Ministry and asked him if he was having “problems” with the Akhmat forces.

According to Alaudinov, the commander told him that they had “187 crimes committed by servicemen in the region, including murder and rape”, but that none of these crimes was committed by Akhmat fighters.

It is unclear which time frame either man had in mind. Alaudinov first reported that Akhmat fighters had arrived in the Kursk region on 8 August, Agentstvo said, as the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched a sudden incursion into the Russian region bordering Ukraine two days earlier.

Meanwhile, a first contingent of North Korean troops is expected to arrive in the Kursk region on Wednesday, Ukrainian military intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov told American military news outlet The War Zone.

Budanov said that 11,000 North Korean infantry troops were undergoing training for combat readiness by the start of November in Russia’s Far East and that Kyiv anticipated around 2,600 of them to be dispatched to the Kursk region, where Russia continues its efforts to reclaim the areas captured by Ukrainian forces in August.