“Kadyrov is a psychopath who personally tortures his political prisoners,” Russia expert Michael Weiss told Yahoo News, alluding to Kadyrov’s well-known human rights abuses. Weiss and others say the apparent presence of Kadyrov’s soldiers in Ukraine could signal a new phase of fighting, one in which the rules of conventional warfare are discarded as Putin becomes more desperate for victory…

The Kremlin has not hyped Kadyrov’s role and, in fact, challenged the bombastic warlord’s own assertion that he was on the outskirts of Kyiv. At the same time, the Kremlin has few other allies to turn to.

“Russia’s scrounging for troops in Chechnya and beyond is probably a sign of how poorly the war has gone for them,” says Ben Friedman, policy director at the Washington, D.C., think tank Defense Priorities.