How Paul Gauguin contributed to the colonial myth

A new Berlin show explores how the French artist's world-famous paintings from the South Sea islands contributed to the myth of an exotic paradise.



Even though he was disappointed by the impact of colonization in French Polynesia, he didn't transmit that in his works

At the end of the 19th century, French artist Paul Gauguin was tired of the Parisian arts scene. He felt European civilization was "artificial and conventional" and aimed to reconnect with a sense of purity, which he believed could be found in "untouched" civilizations.

He therefore left France and his family behind in 1891, setting sail for Tahiti, and later the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa (French Polynesia), where spent most of the rest of his life, until his death in 1903 at the age of 54.

Inspired by the simple everyday life of the Tahitians, his South Seas paintings with pure, strong colors, conveyed the island's tropical atmosphere.

'Amusements in the spirit of the devil,' a Gauguin painting from 1894

During that period, he created a large number of important works that are still famous today — portraits of women on the beach, harvesting, sitting under a tree, half-naked, eating fruit.
The myth of the untouched natural paradise

The myth of the islands' exoticism appealed to him. He positioned himself against colonialism, but he also had questionable relations with 13-year-old girls.

With his South Seas paintings, Paul Gauguin, born in Paris in 1848, contributed to shaping a myth that was already circulating in Europe: In the 18th century, several travelogues by European seafarers stylized islands like Tahiti as utopian natural paradises, where free and public love was practiced like a religion.

However, the painter did not find an untouched South Seas paradise on the colonized island. In his travel diary "Noa Noa," he complained about being "disgusted by the whole European triviality" and "disappointed by things that were so far from what I had wished for and, above all, imagined."

But he didn't portray his disappointment or the traces of colonization in his paintings. Were his depictions more wishful thinking than reality?


IMPOVERISHED OUTSIDER: PAUL GAUGUIN
Sailor, bank clerk and amateur painter
Before Paul Gauguin decided to become a painter, he spent his time cruising on the world's oceans and working as an investment banker at the Paris Bourse. He earned quite a lot of money and founded a family with five children. The impressionists, holding his amateur paintings in great esteem, encouraged him to present them in their exhibititions - and that's when his social decline began.
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'Why are you angry?'

The exhibition "Paul Gauguin — Why Are You Angry?" examines the relationship between Gauguin's South Sea myth and the history of colonization. It explores Gauguin's contribution to colonial ideas, attempting to determine how his perspective depicted or even shaped the narrative of the time.

First shown at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the touring exhibition now opens in Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie museum.

The exhibition is named after a painting by Gauguin, which in the Tahitian original is called "No te aha oe riri." Created in 1896 during the artist's second stay in Tahiti, it depicts scantily clad women looking away from the viewer, with a few chicken running among them.

The enigmatic title defies clear interpretation. The exhibition similarly offers different interpretations on Gauguin's artistic work.

The show "looks at Gauguin's oeuvre — which was also shaped by Western, colonial ideas of 'the exotic' and 'the erotic' —, juxtaposing the works with historical material from both Gauguin's past and his present, and with international contemporary art," says the Alte Nationalgalerie in its press presentation of the exhibition.

Gauguin's works from Tahiti are set in contrast with works by contemporary artists Angela Tiatia, Yuki Kihara, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. Some of the artists are from the South Pacific. Their works break with the traditional Western views on the South Seas — and especially with the cliché of the exotic, available woman.

"Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry?" is on show from March 25 to July 10 at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

This article was originally written in German.

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Exhibition 'Paul Gauguin — Why Are You Angry?'

Do octopuses have emotions?

They look so "alien" but octopuses feel and remember pain like we do. We can track their emotional reactions. But their deeper feelings are a mystery.

Octopuses have three hearts and taste with their suckers

Octavia, an octopus at the New England Aquarium in Boston, was old and dying. She had been moved from her display tank to a quieter, dark place that resembled an octopus' den. That's where the animals go to in the wild when they are nearing the end of their lives.

Her friend, Sy Montgomery, wanted to say goodbye.  

The author and naturalist had known Octavia for several years. Montgomery had fed Octavia fish and played with her countless times. It was part of Montgomery's research for her 2015 book The Soul of an Octopus. Montgomery describes the animal's remarkable intelligence. She had befriended four octopuses (yes, that's the correct plural) with very different personalities.

Montgomery with an octopus (not Octavia) at the New England Aquarium

When DW spoke to Montgomery, she recalled the last time she saw Octavia.

"She was sick, she was old and she was clearly dying," Montgomery said. "I opened the tank and she floated to the top to see me. And she was not hungry ― I handed her a fish and she just took it and put it aside. She made the effort to come up from the bottom of that tank to see me and to touch me. She extended her suckers to me and looked me in the face and held me for minutes."

That was after a period of 10 months during which Octavia had been down in her den, all on her own. She hadn't seen Montgomery or other people. For an animal that only lives three to five years, "10 months is decades," Montgomery said.

Soon after that Octavia passed away.

Emotions — not just reflex reactions

Their last goodbye was one of many interactions that Montgomery has had with octopuses that make her certain they have emotions. Her take is based on personal experiences, anecdotal evidence. But Montgomery isn't alone in her assessment.

There is a consensus in the field of animal sentience that octopuses are conscious beings — that they can feel pain and actively try to avoid it.

Kristin Andrews and Frans de Waal posit in a new report published in the journal Science that many animals, including cephalopods such as octopuses, feel pain . But they don't just react reflexively, like a child pulling away their hand from a hot stove. That type of reaction is known as nociception.

Octopuses display reactions that go far beyond that, say Andrews and de Waal, citing research from the past 20 years.

Octopuses can change their color and blend in with the environment

"Nociception does not necessarily reach the central nervous system and consciousness," they write in the Science article — that means the animal may want to avoid pain, but that this pain doesn't come with any associated feeling.

Octopuses, however, have shown that they avoid places where they previously experienced negative stimuli, even if they are free of pain in that very moment.

That, Andrews and de Waal write, is because they remember the pain they felt there, processed it and noted it as something they want to avoid. They feel a memory of pain.

The difference between emotions and feelings

When researchers look at the inner lives of animals, they distinguish between emotions and feelings.

Emotions, write Andrews and de Waal, are "measurable physiological and/or neural states that are often reflected in behavior."

That includes increased body temperature, increased neurotransmitter and hormone activity or an animal's avoiding a place where a scientist poked it with a stick the other day.

Feelings, on the other hand, happen at a deeper level than emotions.

Human animals often share their feelings verbally. We say things like "I'm so happy!" or "That makes me really angry."

People can't communicate with other animals on that level. So, it's impossible for us to know exactly what non-human animals feel. But that doesn't mean they don't feel anything.

Speaking to DW, Andrews said "scientists should accept the feelings-side of emotions for animals, just like we do for humans. The 'yay!' of joy, the crushing, heavy despair of sadness. Feelings of pain, feelings of pleasure or of sun on your skin."

"We can't measure that in animals. But we can't measure it in humans either," said Andrews, the Research Chair in Animal Minds at York University in Toronto, Canada.  

Scuba divers like filmmaker Craig Foster say octopuses are highly curious creatures

Montgomery makes the same point. Sure, she doesn't know what feelings are at play when an octopus comes up to the water's surface to touch her gently. But do we ever have that knowledge about another living creature, she asks.

"I don't know what octopuses feel in their hearts," Montgomery said. "But I also don't know what my husband truly feels or whether happiness for him feels the same as happiness feels for me."

Important step for animal welfare

The UK has taken a step towards recognizing octopuses and their relatives as sentient — as their being conscious, with feelings and memories of pain.

Cephalopod molluscs, like octopuses, and decapod crustaceans, like crabs, lobsters and crayfish, are included in a new animal welfare law that is going through the UK parliament right now.

Jonathan Birch, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, led a team that looked at more than 300 studies before advising the UK government on the law.

If the UK's new animal welfare law is passed, crayfish, octopuses and their relatives will 

enjoy higher levels of protection

"The evidence tilted towards the animals being sentient," Birch said. "We recommended the inclusion of all of these animals in the scope of the animal welfare law. But the evidence was particularly strong for octopuses."

Birch says it's human to find it hard to empathize with animals like crayfish or octopuses, "because they look so different from us and they seem so alien."

"But that doesn't mean there's nothing there to empathize with, it doesn't mean they don't have feelings," he said. "We've got to be led by the evidence on this."

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany

Germany looks set to cut development aid

While Germany is dramatically boosting its defense budget in the face of the Ukraine war, it is planning a reduction of development aid by 12% in its draft budget. The decrease has critics up in arms.

BMZ (Germany's Development Aid Ministry) runs a plethora of projects around the world

Germany's new Finance Minister Christian Lindner, from the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), has presented his draft budget for his first year in office. It foresees spending to the tune of €457.6 billion ($503.5 bn). Not all of the government ministers are happy with the plans.

The budget of Germany's Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, is to shrink to €10.8 billion – while the defense budget is set to increase to over €50 billion. The boost to the defense budget is due to the war in Europe.

But Ukraine and Russia are also major grain exporters – and those exports will now all but dry up as the war continues.

"The war in the world's breadbasket is having a dramatic impact on global nutrition," warned Development Minister Svenja Schulze, from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

Meanwhile, Germany is set to cut its contribution to the World Food Programme by 50% to €28 million. "This amount will not be enough to compensate for crop failures and prevent famine," Schulze warned.

Even before the war broke out, she said, the COVID pandemic affected the poorest countries, adding to the burden on their health systems and economies. And all this was on top of the climate crisis, which is hitting the world's poorest countries the hardest, with droughts, storms, floods, and crop failures.

Germany will uphold its commitment to spend 0.7% of economic output, amounting to €23 billion, towards official development assistance (ODA). But government spending towards refugees in Germany and humanitarian assistance organized by the Foreign Office count as part of ODA as well and make up more than half of development assistance spending.

The actual German development aid budget is an investment in specific programs to alleviate poverty in the long term, rather than the short-term response of humanitarian aid. Germany supports economic, environmental, social, and political programs in developing countries, which contribute to the fight against hunger and poverty, the protection of the climate and biodiversity, health and education, gender equality, fair supply chains, and technology transfer. Germany is one of the largest donor countries worldwide.

Development Aid Minister Svenja Schulze has so far been unable to prevent her budget from being cut

But the smallest partner in the new coalition government,the business-focussed Free Democrats (FDP) have a skeptical view of development aid. In its party platform, the FDP states that substantial savings are possible in this area — by placing the focus on "quality rather than quantity," according to party publications. It is the party's chairman, Finance Minister Lindner, who has now presented the draft budget slashing the development aid by €1.6 billion.

"The way forward can not be to have more and more projects. We need to be more efficient. Everything needs to be put to the test, whether it's small or large organizations, bilateral or multilateral projects," argued FDP lawmaker Claudia Raffelhüschen in this week's debate in the federal parliament, the Bundestag.

But many parliamentarians are critical of the planned increase in military spending. They find the cuts to development aid particularly upsetting: "Millions more are likely to be driven into hunger by the war," argued Andrej Hunko of the socialist Left Party. In this situation, he said, investing €100 billion in a special fund for the Bundeswehr meant "a completely wrong setting of priorities."

Finance Minister Christian Lindner believes development aid could be organized more efficiently

And many in the environmentalist Green Party agree. "Security, after all, does not just mean military security," said Green lawmaker Deborah Düring. "We are responsible to ensure a balance between spending on defense, civil crisis prevention, and human rights-based development cooperation." 

In the coalition agreement for the new government that was hammered out by the SPD, Greens, and FDP before they formed the government in December 2021, there is the commitment that development aid and defense spending should both increase at the same pace.

"If the regular defense budget is now to increase by €3.4 billion and the defense budget is actually decreased by €1.6 billion at the same time, this is a violation of our coalition agreement which lawmakers from all three parties find hard to comprehend," said the SPD's development policy spokeswoman, Sanae Abdi.

The sentiment is echoed by German NGOs. Even before the Ukraine-Russia war began one month ago, the development organizations' association Venro had calculated that the budget should be raised to €31.2 billion for development cooperation and humanitarian aid to meet the targets in combating the climate crisis, achieving food security, and improving international health care.

The draft budget will now be debated and an increase in the development aid budget is could still be negotiated. The final budget will be presented and voted on at the end of June.

This article has been adapted from German.

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.

How Ukrainian cultural heritage is being preserved online

The organization Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online is on a mission to secure Ukraine's cultural treasures digitally, creating copies of at-risk sites.

Archives, collections and digital servers of cultural institutions need shelter from war, too

Russian bombs are falling on Ukraine for the fourth week running. Houses and hospitals have been destroyed, and many people have been killed.

The cultural heritage of the country has not been spared by Russian's army either. Important cultural institutions have been destroyed; among others, the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol was completely destroyed by bombs, while the Sviatohirsk Cave Monastery — dating back to 1526 — was badly damaged by Russian shelling.

Though people in Ukraine are trying to save their cultural heritage, storing works behind sandbags or putting them away in bunkers, the voluntary organization Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) is trying to save the country's heritage from afar. One of its initiators is the Vienna-based digital historian Sebastian Majstorovic.
Loss of centuries-old art

"Apparently I am conscious about this fragility of culture," Majstorovic told DW. "Through my background you could say that I've developed antennae for that."

As a student in Cologne in 2009, Majstorovic witnessed the collapse of the city's archives. Innumerable documents were destroyed, including valuable records, writings from the Middle Ages and historical photographs.

"Our school bordered the backyard of the city archive and, coincidentally, I was in the classroom that overlooked the archive building. Because I was already programming apps at the time, I had an iPhone to record a video of the incident. The archive collapsed in front of my eyes. We saw how people were rescued from the debris of the neighboring residential areas. It had a huge impact," Majstorovic said.

On March 3, 2009, the city archive in Cologne collapsed, killing two people

Destruction of the National Library of Bosnia

The collapse of Cologne's city archives was not the only incident that made Majstorovic realize the fragility of cultural treasures.

Majstorovic's father, who comes from Bosnia-Herzegovina, escaped to Germany before the war, but has often told his son about the tragic losses of national heritage that occurred through the conflict.

In 1992, the Vijecnica building, which houses the National Library in Sarajevo, became the target of shelling by Bosnian Serbs — even though the grand building in Sarajevo's center was not used for military purposes.

More than 80% of the library's contents were destroyed; about 3 million books and numerous old documents tracing the history of the country went up in flames.

"The National Library was a treasure: It had documents about the multiethnic, cosmopolitan Bosnia, with its rich culture," Majstorovic said. "It is now difficult for historians to find, for example, documents about the Jewish community in Sarajevo. These are all things that got lost there."

Even though he did not experience the Siege of Sarajevo personally, Majstorovic said his father's accounts had deeply marked him.

"If the intention at the time was to destroy Bosnian identity by removing cultural institutions, then we see a similar pattern in Ukraine today," he said.

In Odesa a monument to city founder Duke de Richelieu was covered with sandbags
Digitally saving Ukrainian heritage

Today, Majstorovic works at the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage in Vienna.

Three weeks ago, he founded SUCHO with two like-minded people.

"In the beginning, we focused on securing everything that was publicly available on the internet," he said. They use a program that searches websites of cultural institutions and archives for links and downloads information such as documents, photographs of artworks, virtual tours of reconstructed historical monuments, films, folk music productions amd traditional dress patterns.

The fully program does not function on its own all the time, which is why Majstorovic has enlisted the help of volunteers who help download the data manually. In some cases, programmers write special applications to save information.

For the past three weeks, SUCHO has already secured 10 terabytes of data.

At the beginning, Majstorovic took over the costs himself, but expenses grew fast; SUCHO now has support from tech organizations and internet providers who are making their servers available for free.
Digitization of cultural goods

Majstorovic said the problem was not digitizing cultural heritage. "Cultural institutions, also in poor countries are doing a good job of digitizing their heritage. However, no one has thought much about securing the data and that is something that worries me," he said.

One needs to work together internationally to create a digital infrastructure in which even small regional museums can secure their data with little effort and at no expense, he added.

SUCHO is working with the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the University of Alberta to create exactly this infrastructure in order to protect cultural heritage from war or natural calamities.

Majstorovic knows only too well how destroyed materials can make the work of historians more difficult.

For his doctoral thesis on revolutionary apprentices in the 19th century, many valuable documents are no longer available. "The main archives for my research are in Vienna and Milan. But the archive in Milan was destroyed by the Germans during WWII and the documents in Vienna were in the Palace of Justice, which was set on fire during the riots in the 1920s," Majstorovic said.

Many historians have been confronted with similar problems. "That is why digitally secured copies are so important," he says.
Securing cultural goods

In fact, every cultural object is a public object and protected by the general rules of warfare. Additionally, the international community, including Russia, signed the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 1954. But Moscow does not seem to be adhering to the agreement in the current war.

Politicians are also trying to contribute to the protection of cultural property. The German government's commissioner for culture and media, Claudia Roth, for example, has created the Netzwerk Kulturgutschutz Ukraine with the Foreign Ministry.

Emphasizing that stopping Russia's invasion of Ukraine by the Kremlin and humanitarian help need to be at the forefront of international efforts, Roth said her office would additionally work "for Ukraine's cultural treasures, which are acutely threatened by destruction, and together with them, the cultural heritage of Europe." She added: "There are already a number of contacts and activities on all levels to protect endangered cultural objects in Ukraine."

Katja Keul, the minister of state in the Foreign Ministry, said Russia's invasion was deliberately targeting identity, heritage and artistic treasures: "We will help people in Ukraine with all our strength to protect and defend their culture."

The Culture Ministry is collecting proof from eyewitnesses on destroyed institutions. So far, 80 attacks have been made on cultural institutions, and the number is rising every day.

This article was originally written in German.

Superyachts symbolize climate breakdown

Their Russian oligarch owners have put superyachts in the spotlight since the invasion of Ukraine. But what makes these billionaires' toys the ultimate climate killers?

Ambramovich's 'spare' superyacht, 'Solaris,' moved from Barcelona to Montenegro this month after he was sanctioned

In the wake of heavy sanctions on Russian oligarchs spurred by the war in Ukraine, some of the world's biggest and most lavish superyachts are being moved out of EU waters, while others have already been compounded.

Billionaire and Putin ally Roman Abramovich, who made his fortune selling oil and gas, has moved two of his megayachts — including arguably the biggest and most expensive on the planet — into sanction-free waters, including in the port of Bodrum in Turkey. 

But as this cat-and-mouse game becomes a glitzy side-story to Russia's invasion of Ukraine — Putin himself is rumored to own a luxury yacht — less is known about the outsized carbon footprint of these lavish hulks that resemble cruise liners.

Luxury mega-yachts can burn up to 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to research by

Richard Wilk,  a professor of anthropology at Indiana University, and his colleague Beatriz Barros, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology. They have been documenting the emissions of the super-rich.

They describe such vessels, which are variously equipped with helicopters, submarines, swimming pools and accommodation for up to 100 crew members, as "by far the worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint."

Superyachts are responsible for two-thirds of billionaire carbon emissions

The top 20 billionaires analyzed by Wilk and Barros emitted around 8,000 metric tons of CO2 annually in 2018, while average citizens worldwide had a carbon footprint of around 4 tons— and 15 tons in the United States.

An astounding two-thirds of these super-rich emissions are created by their superyachts. 

Roman Abromovich's superyacht eclipses all others

The biggest polluting billionaire also has two of the largest yachts. Abramovich's "Eclipse," currently moored in Turkey, is said to be the most expensive megayacht in the world. It is also responsible for around two-thirds of the Russian oil and gas mogul's annual carbon footprint, which was estimated at 33,859 metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2018  — more than one-sixth of the whole island nation of Tonga. The Eclipse alone costs around $60 million (€55 million) annually to operate. 

Bill Gates has around 10 times the wealth of Ambramovich with around $124 billion (versus $14 million) yet he emits around a fifth of the pollution because, the authors say, "he does not own a giant yacht" — yet Gates partly makes up for it with private jets.

The 142.81 metre sail-assisted motor yacht Sailing Yacht A, owned by Russian tycoon Andrey Melnichenko

These figures are "the tip of the iceberg," write Wilk and Barros since they don't include "embedded" carbon, which is to say all the CO2 burnt to produce the vessels. Another form of embedded carbon might be the fossil fuel money used to pay for these luxury yachts like the one above. "Sailing Yacht A," which has been seized by Italy, belongs to Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko — who owns the coal company SUEK.

140-meter megayacht ''Scheherazade'' anchors in Turkey in 2020: Is it Vladimir Putin's?

Privacy laws and data protection help shield much super-rich consumption. "Nevertheless," say the authors, "we think our calculations are illustrative and reflect on fundamental issues of climate justice by contributing to ongoing debates over who is responsible for climate change." Indeed, no one even seems to know who owns the 140-meter-long "Scheherazade" superyacht above. Some claims have linked it to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Earth 300 is a green-tech superyacht devoted to science, not luxury

Not all megayachts are climate killers. The Earth 300 will be the world's biggest superyacht, yet it will have zero emissions and aims to unite science and exploration to confront the planet's greatest challenge: climate change. The 300-meter long vessel will accommodate up to 400 people when launched in 2025. Though its carbon footprint will be relatively small, it will controversially be nuclear-powered.

OLIGARCHS' YACHTS: SEIZED OR UNDER SPECULATION — IN PICTURES
Sailing Yacht A
This 143-meter (470-foot) Sailing Yacht A, also referred to as "SY A," is valued at around €530 million ($578 million). Italian authorities seized it after identifying the owner as Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko. He owns major fertilizer producer EuroChem Group and coal company SUEK. Both companies announced recently that Melnichenko had resigned as a board member.
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Edited by: Tamsin Walker

Chechen and Tatar Muslims take up arms to fight for Ukraine

Chechen warlord and Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov boasted of his soldiers' part in Russia's war in Ukraine. But many Chechen and Tatar Muslims are defending Ukraine and settling scores with the rulers of their homelands.

    

Ukraine, seen here before the Russian invasion, is home to a variety of Muslim communities

The number of these fighters deployed to Ukraine is unknown, but their reputation for brutality and ruthlessness in enforcing domestic rule is well-known, and their presence has raised memories of grisly urban combat and guerilla fighting from the Chechen wars in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, known as one of the most loyal allies of President Vladimir Putin, announced on his Telegram channels that his men would be fighting in the "hottest hotspots in Ukraine."

However, some military analysts have cast doubt on whether his braggadocio on social media has accurately reflected his troops' performance on the battlefield. 

Many believe the Kremlin has sent the Chechen's ruthless warlord (center) and his troops to Ukraine

Across the frontlines, another group of Chechens has also joined the war — but they intend to defend Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

"Dear Ukrainians, please do not see those people as Chechens," said Adam Osmayev, an exiled Chechen leader, in a video published on social media, referring to Kadyrov's soldiers. "They are traitors … puppets of Russia."

"Real Chechens are standing with you, bleeding with you, as they have in the past eight years," he said, holding a gun and standing next to three other armed men with masked faces.

Osmayev leads the Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion, named after the late Chechen rebel leader. The group is one of the two publicly known Chechen volunteer groups fighting against Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces in Ukraine since 2014. The other one is called the Sheikh Mansur Battalion and is headed by a commander called Muslim Cheberloevsky. 

The identity and the exact number of the Chechen volunteers are unknown. But most of them are believed to be people who left Chechnya either after the end of the war there in 2003 or who have escaped Kadyrov's despotic rule over the past years.

In 2013, the Ukrainian government, then a Moscow ally, imprisoned Osmayev for plotting to assassinate Putin — an accusation he denies. When he was released a year later, he went to the Donbas region to fight the pro-Russian separatists.

Both Russian and Western media have reported alleged links between the  Sheikh Mansur Battalion and the "Islamic State."

Osmayev, the commander of a Chechen battalion, has been accused of plotting to assassinate Putin

When Putin's army began marching toward Kyiv, leaders of both battalions, along with thousands of other foreign volunteer fighters, announced they would continue to defend Ukraine against "their common enemy." 

Their determination to assist Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian invasion stems from similarities they see between what Ukrainians are going through and their own fate.

A long, violent history

Chechnya, now a Russian republic, is home to a majority-Muslim population and has a complicated and often violent history with Moscow.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia waged two devastating wars to keep Chechnya from becoming independent, a goal to which it had been aspiring since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The first conflict broke out in 1994 when Russia sent troops to the Chechen Republic to quash its attempt to break away. Fighting paused only two years later, in 1997, following the signing of a peace agreement in August 1996. 

But in 1999, the Russian army returned after a series of deadly terror attacks organized by Chechen warlords on the territory of Russia. A new war erupted, lasting 10 years and culminating in the siege of Grozny by the Russian troops, resulting in enormous destruction and tens of thousands of civilian casualties.  

The first two years of that war coincided with Putin's ascension to power. The active phase of the war was over in April 2000. Two months later, Putin appointed Akhmad Kadyrov as head of the Chechen Republic, who would rule until he was assassinated by Islamist rebels in 2004. 

His son Ramzan Kadyrov became Chechen leader in 2007 and has remained in office ever since.  

Under Kadyrov's rule, human rights have deteriorated as critics, activists and journalists face clampdowns. He is suspected of having been involved in the killings of several critics outside Chechnya, including Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former military commander gunned down in Berlin in 2019.

"It is safe to say that a great majority of the Chechen diaspora left their homeland after Kadyrov came to power, not during the war," Marat Iliyasov, a researcher at Lithuania's Vytautas Magnus University, told DW.

Bringing back Chechen memories

For many exiled Chechens, Putin is treating Ukrainians the way he treated them.

"Moscow's attempts today to impose its control over independent Ukraine resonates in the hearts and minds of many Chechens who remember their struggle for independence against the Russian colonizing machine," Albert Bininachvili, a professor of political science at Bologna University, told DW.

Putin aspires to expand Russia's domination to the Soviet borders, he explained, but without the intention of bringing back the Soviet system, "which in effect leaves us with nothing but Russian colonialism."

The battle of Grozny was a turning point for Russia in its war against Chechnya

"Chechens consider the war in Ukraine as a continuation of the war in Chechnya," Iliyasov said. "So they want to contribute to eventual victory against this perceived evil — something not achieved on Chechen soil."

"That's alongside another motivation, which is a kind of moral obligation to help people who are in such situations, and showing solidarity with them," he added.

Cheberloevsky, the head of the Sheikh Mansur Battalion, also considers the latest fighting as part of a much longer conflict. He said in an interview with Radio Free Europe's Caucasus service, "We have been fighting in Ukraine since 2014 to beat our common enemy."

Akhmed Zakayev, the head of the Chechen separatist government in exile, encouraged all Chechens living abroad to fight alongside the Ukrainian government in a video shared on social media.

Discrediting Putin's propaganda

Chechens are not the only Muslim group assisting Ukrainians.

Said Ismagilov, one of Ukraine's top Islamic leaders, who is of Tatar origin, posted a picture of himself in a military uniform beside the members of the Territorial Defence Forces in Kyiv. In another video, he called on the Muslims in the world to stand in solidarity with Ukraine.

The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014,  have been resisting Russian occupation since 2015, with some of them fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces. 

In a video widely shared by Ukrainian media, Ayder Rustemov, the head of Crimea's Muslim community as recognized by Ukraine, urged Ukrainian Muslims to defend their country and called on RСаид Исмагилов - Support Ukraine: an appeal to Muslims... | Facebook Russian Muslims to denounce Russia's aggression.

Kadyrov, who adheres to Sufism, a moderate sect of Islam with deep historical roots in Chechnya, tried to brand the battles in Ukraine as jihad, the Islamic term for holy war. "We have an order, we have jihad!" He wrote on his Telegram channel on March 4.

Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have said Kadyrov’s paramilitary forces have a long record of terrorizing, torturing and killing political dissidents claiming they were Islamic rebels.

Kadyrov’s latest claims have particularly come under criticism not just by Muslim activists and leaders but even by believers in the holy war, including jihadis in Syria and Iraq.

"Russia has killed thousands of Muslims and is still killing them," wrote Maysara bin Ali, also known as Abu Maria al-Qahtani, a commander of Islamist group Heyaat al Tahrir Sham, on Telegram. "Strengthening Russia in Ukraine means strengthening criminals."

Edited by: Tim Jones