Russia Exploits Muslim Jihad in Ukraine After Centuries of Courting Muslims for Political Expediency

Russian forces have handed Chechen “Akhmat” units loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov operational and  economic control over parts of occupied Mariupol. Russian forces captured the Donetsk Oblast port city after a months-long siege in 2022.

The claim comes from Atesh, a Ukrainian resistance network that conducts sabotage operations and gathers intelligence on Russian forces in occupied territory and Russia. Atesh reported that Moscow is transferring control of the city and surrounding region to Chechen forces as a reward for Chechnya’s loyalty to the Kremlin. Additional Chechen forces are reportedly arriving to consolidate control over local resources.

Chechnya is a Muslim-majority republic within the Russian Federation, and Kadyrov’s forces are Muslim. Chechen units have fought in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. Kadyrov announced their deployment on February 26, 2022. Chechnya’s chief mufti, Salah-Haji Mezhiev, has publicly called the war a “jihad” and described Chechen participation as “jihad in the path of God.”

It appears contradictory for a Muslim cleric serving the government of Christian-majority Russia to describe its war against Christian-majority Ukraine as a jihad. This framing raises concerns about the future of Christian Ukrainians and Russians living in areas placed under Chechen control.

In August 2024, Putin made his first trip to Chechnya in nearly 13 years. He visited a special forces academy where volunteers bound for Ukraine train. According to Kadyrov, more than 47,000 fighters had trained at the facility since 2022.

During the same visit, Putin attended the opening of one of the region’s largest mosques in Grozny. Kadyrov and Mezhiev reported that Chechnya had 1,461 functioning mosques and another 115 under construction. Putin thanked the clergy for their “defense of Russia’s interests.”

Russian governments have institutionalized and co-opted Islamic authority since Catherine the Great created a state-controlled muftiate in 1788. During the Soviet period, the state administered Islam through four regional directorates headquartered in Tashkent, Ufa, Buynaksk, and Baku. After the Soviet Union collapsed, regional Muslim institutions emerged from this system.

Russia has eight republics commonly identified as Muslim republics: Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Adygea. Most of Russia’s estimated 14 million Muslims, about 10 percent of the country’s population, live in these republics.

A regional analysis notes that the Kremlin promotes what it calls “traditional official Islam,” which is explicitly loyal and patriotic. Moscow empowers selected muftiates, including the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Russian Federation, allowing the state to control “correct” religious interpretation and use Islam as an instrument of policy. The analysis cites Kadyrov’s description of the war in Ukraine as a “Holy War” as an example of this instrumentalization.

Hudson describes this system as a “confessional management” model. Islamic institutions produce loyal regional elites and legitimize central control, while Orthodox Christianity remains symbolically dominant at the center of Russian power.

Putin’s outreach to Muslims extends beyond Russia’s borders. Russia became an observer in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in 2005 and established the Strategic Vision Group “Russia-Islamic World” the following year. The group includes government officials, religious leaders, and public figures from 27 Islamic countries.

Moscow launched RT Arabic in 2007 and established Russian cultural centers across the Middle East and North Africa. Since 2009, it has also hosted the annual Russia-Islamic World economic forum. Putin elevated the forum to a federal event in 2023.

The Kremlin has also cultivated partnerships with Gulf states based on what it calls “moderate Islam.” A 2016 conference in Grozny, co-hosted with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, helped repair relations strained by the Syrian war. That year, Putin called Russia a “reliable ally” of the Islamic world, citing its military campaign in Syria. Kadyrov supported this outreach by performing the Hajj in 2018 and 2022 and meeting Saudi leaders during both visits.

Putin’s government applied the same approach in Crimea after the 2014 annexation. Moscow initially courted the peninsula’s Muslim population, promising the Crimean Tatars, who represented about 15 percent of the population, that their rights would be restored. The Kremlin also promised that Tatar would become an official language alongside Russian and Ukrainian and that Russia would show greater respect for Islam than the Tatars had received under Kyiv.

The Kremlin worked through aligned Russian Muslim institutions to maintain Muslim loyalty and portrayed Russia as “part of the Muslim world.” The strategy largely failed in Crimea. Unlike the peninsula’s ethnic Russian majority, most Tatars opposed the annexation. They organized patrols to prevent Russian soldiers, armored personnel carriers, pro-Russian paramilitaries, and Cossacks from entering their villages.

Moscow responded by exiling community leaders, banning rallies, closing Tatar media outlets, and obstructing the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatars’ representative body. Russia formally outlawed the Mejlis as an extremist organization in 2016. The response demonstrated that Moscow’s support for Muslim institutions depended on political loyalty rather than concern for the welfare of Muslim populations.

Russia expanded its outreach to the Islamic world after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as part of its attempt to counter Western influence. Its March 2023 foreign policy concept used the word “Islamic” for the first time and called for deeper relations with Muslim-majority countries. That year, Russia began introducing Islamic banking in Dagestan, Chechnya, Bashkortostan, and Tatarstan.

At the KazanForum in May 2026, Putin said Russia remained committed to expanding “friendly and mutually beneficial ties with Islamic states.” In a speech delivered by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, Putin said this cooperation was based on “shared values” and respect for cultural and civilizational diversity. He presented Russia’s religious and ethnic diversity as a model for relations with Islamic countries.

Russia also announced plans to hold its first Russian-Arab summit in 2026. The venue was not selected, although Cairo was proposed because it hosts the Arab League headquarters. As of this writing, however, the summit, originally planned for late summer or early fall, has yet to take place.