Led out by a beaming Adam Kadyrov, the son of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, a group of muscular men sporting black beards strode on to the brightly illuminated stage in Dubai last week to receive gold medals and a $5,000 (£3,960) cheque.
The men were members of the notorious Chechen Akhmat Kadyrov special police regiment, a group that Ukrainian officials have said was responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the war with Russia. The unit had just won one of the contests at the international Swat Challenge games, which are held each year in the United Arab Emirates.
The invasion of Ukraine has made Russia a pariah state in the west, with many Russian sports teams and cultural figures banned from participation in global competitions. But in Dubai last week, Chechen forces were competing against elite police squads from the US and Canada, raising questions among security experts and human rights observers about why western security groups were taking part in a contest alongside a unit accused of war crimes in Ukraine.
Hosted by the Dubai police over the last week, the 5th UAE Swat Challenge bills itself as the Olympics for elite law enforcement agencies and aims to “foster cooperation and exchange of tactical techniques and skills” among international police teams, according to the event’s website.
In videos published by organisers, 87 Swat teams from 48 countries are seen engaging in various mock tactical challenges including assaults, rescues and shooting drills.
Among this year’s participants were two US law enforcement agencies, the NYPD emergency service unit, New York’s select police unit, and the San Antonio police department (SAPD) from Texas. From Canada, the London emergency response unit (LU) participated.
Prof Mark Galeotti, a specialist on Russian security affairs and organised crime, said: “I don’t know of any similar cases of US police participation in events alongside teams from Russia, let alone a unit from Chechnya active in Ukraine. I would have expected US pressure on the police forces to voluntarily pull out.”
On the event’s website, the Dubai police say the goal of the tournament is to “foster an exchange of tactical techniques and skills among international Swat teams”, as well as to “create cooperation between all Swat teams on a global level and for members”.
One source with knowledge of US security services said it was “embarrassing” for US special units to participate in events alongside the Chechen group. “Obviously it is bad for US law enforcement to be at the same events,” the source said. “This is embarrassing optics-wise given accusations about what Akhmat units did.”
The Akhmat Kadyrov special forces, which are named after the Chechen president’s father, Akhmad, have played a prominent role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
They have appeared among forces taking part in a brutal siege on the port city of Mariupol, where targets included a maternity hospital and the suffering of hundreds of thousands has become emblematic of Ukrainian pain.
At home in Chechnya, the special police forces have long been accused of committing widespread human rights abuses including kidnapping, forced disappearances, torture and murder as well as pogroms against the LGBTQ+ community.
The Akhmat is led by Zamid Chalaev, one of Kadyrov’s top security officials. Chalaev is under US sanctions for the siege of Mariupol and “the transfer of Ukrainian children to camps in the Chechen Republic”.
Pictures published by the Swat Challenge website show him attending the tournament.
The NYPD as well as Canada’s LU did not answer questions from the Guardian about whether they were aware of the background of the Akhmat or whether they were worried about exchanging information with other participants.
In a written reply, the SAPD said: “Each participating country has their own geopolitical history and are not taken into consideration by participating teams. The purpose of events like this are for the best in the world to showcase their skills in the spirit of competition, much like the Olympics.”
In a post on X on Tuesday, the NYPD thanked the Dubai police for the invitation to participate, writing: “In a friendly competition, our NYPD Specialops emergency service unit team partook in the Swat Challenge and got to showcase their training and techniques.”
The competition appears to lure participants by covering expenses while offering the winners lavish payments. According to the Khaleej Times, a Dubai news outlet, a total of $260,000 in prize money is distributed during the tournament, with the top place, which was won by the Chechens last year, taking home $80,000, while $40,000 is reserved for the second place.
There are daily challenge prizes too, one of which Kadyrov’s men claimed on Tuesday when they were pictured receiving a $5,000 cheque for coming first at the “Tower Event” where, according to the organisers, they showed “unparalleled displays of agility, strength, and tactical skill”.
It is unclear whether the prize money is divided among team members or goes directly to the police forces, although given that Kadyrov runs Chechnya as his personal fiefdom, experts suggested he was likely to directly profit from the tournament.
The three North American police forces did not answer questions from the Guardian about whether the Dubai police paid for their participation in the tournament or whether the UAE force covered any other costs.
But in an interview with the Canadian CBS in 2019, the US Alachua County sheriff’s office, which participated that year, said the Dubai police covered much of the costs, including travel, lodging, meals and “things needed for the competition”.
“Best on the planet”
Western participation in Dubai Swat games has granted the event an aura of legitimacy, said Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert on Russian security services.
Soldatov said that while the exchange of knowledge between Russian and US police and anti-terrorism units was not unheard of, it was unusual for them to compete in a public event for money.
The competition has already been widely used as a public relations opportunity for the Chechen forces at a time when its fighters have infamously earned a negative reputation as “TikTok fighters” because of their constant social media use on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Announcing the Chechen victory at the Swat Challenge on Tuesday, one state-run outlet triumphantly wrote: “Akhmat again demonstrated that it is the best special forces on the planet.” Kadyrov told his 2 million followers on his Telegram channel that his fighters had a “great result” in a tournament of “global proportions”.
Galeotti said: “US participation legitimised the event but far more importantly was a gift to Grozny (and Moscow). The USA ends up looking incompetent at best, downright eager to flout its own rules at worst.”
The games also highlighted the rise of 16-year-old Adam Kadyrov, one of the several children of the Chechen president who have recently been elevated to top positions in Chechnya.
Although a federal republic of Russia, Ramzan Kadyrov has been given wide leeway by Vladimir Putin to gradually transform the region into a state within a state, with its own laws, security services and even foreign policy.
In September, Kadyrov reposted a video on Telegram that showed Adam launching a flurry of kicks and punches to the head of a Russian prisoner who had been transferred to Chechnya after being accused of burning a Qur’an. On Tuesday, as Adam went on stage to collect the medal in Dubai, a court in Russia cleared him of all charges in relation to the incident.
The Akhmat squad is not the only controversial security unit to take part in this year’s tournament. Also competing was the Almaz anti-terrorism unit, a special unit of Belarus’s ministry of internal affairs that has widely been accused of violently suppressing anti-government protests in the country in 2020-2021 after rigged elections kept Aleksander Lukashenko in power.
And last year the NYPD emergency service unit competed against SOBR and Vityaz, two specialist units of Rosgvardia, Russia’s national guard that answers directly to Putin and was sent to Ukraine at the start of the war.
Galeotti said it would be wrong to equate the Almaz and the Akhmat units with western counterparts, which traditionally operate against terrorists and organised crime.
“Almaz has played a key role in political repression in Belarus while Akhmat is not only part of Kadyrov’s brutal private army, it is still playing a combat role in Ukraine.”
