Don’t understand how the Chechen’s could be fighting for the Russians. I watched a gruesome video of a Chechen fighter instructing a group on how to sever the head of a Russian…using a real Russian. The most horrible video I have ever seen and it still haunts me. I always thought they were mortal enemies.
Politics (power struggles) make strange bedfellows. History teaches us this. Muslims are playing the long game; the enemy of my enemy is my friend (an Arab saying). They’ll fight with their former (and long-term) enemy the Russians, until it’s time to turn on them and go for the jugular. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.
Same reason the Germans and Japanese are now our allies. When you've soundly beaten your enemies, they tend to come around.
The Russians tried once to take Chechnya and failed so they went back a second time and leveled Grozny to rubble. And here we are.