Twenty years ago, one of the first things you’d see when opening an international newspaper was the word “Chechnya”. The North Caucasus republic, caught in a separatist struggle in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, became a byword internationally for atrocities by the Russian military, plus the occasional kidnapping of foreign journalists and aid workers.
Today, the conflict is over in Chechnya, and Kremlin-backed warlord Ramzan Kadyrov is firmly ensconced in power as head of the Chechen Republic. But the war still rumbles on in Europe, which has become a haven for thousands of Chechens who fled the bloody war and the brutal attention of the Russian security forces.
Indeed, before the migration crisis hit Europe, migrants from Russia made up one of the largest groups of asylum seekers on the continent. In 2013, more than 40,000 Russian citizens - many of them Chechens - applied for asylum to EU countries. In 2020, 5,500 people from Russia sought asylum in EU states.
