Warlord with Ties to Chechen Anti-Gay Persecution Killed in Ukraine

An advisor to Chechnya's strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, who allegedly played a part in the nation's brutal anti-gay purge, has been killed in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko reported in a Feb. 26 tweet that Magomed Tushayev, described in reports as Kadyrov's "right hand man," died in a clash between Russian forces and Ukrainian defenders who were battling for control of Antonov Airport near the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv.

Tushayev's death was confirmed by the Ukrainian government, A Real News.com reported. He was killed not long after boasting in a video posted online that his battalion had not had "one single casualty, or wounded, not a single man has even had a runny nose."

His battalion was part of forces sent into Ukraine by Kadyrov in aid of Russia's invasion of the democratic nation.

Australian newspaper the Star Observer reported that Tushayev was "known for brutalizing and persecuting LGBTQI people" in Chechnya's years-long attacks on sexual and gender minorities.

News sources say that Tushayev played a part in the abduction of an LGBTQ+ rights activist named Ibragim Selimkhanov, who was kidnapped in Moscow and taken to Chechnya. There, reports say, Selimkhanov was subjected to torture before eventually escaping.

Accounts of torture, inhumane conditions in detention, and even murder of LGTBQ+ people in Chechnya have circulated for years. Russian authorities have evidently done little, if anything, to stop Chechnyan operatives from committing such abductions, and, in the case of two gay men – Salekh Magamadov and Ismail Isayev, Chechen refugees who had fled to the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod – have even assisted in such operations.

A damning 2017 report from Russian LGBT Network compiled accounts of detained people and witnesses who collectively painted a picture of vicious homophobic brutality and called Chechnya's "purge" of LGTBQ+ people "an unprecedented act of mass violence" aimed at sexual and gender minorities.

Prior to the current level of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution, the report stated, Chechen police and military members routinely "set up fake dates and then blackmailed the men for money to keep their homosexuality a secret."

From there, the persecution grew to an all-out assault that now includes "electrocution, beatings, starvation, dehydration, isolation, forced nudity, homophobic insults and misgendering to get the men to reveal more suspected homosexuals," Hornet reported.