Former criminal and alleged 'Kadyrov killer' Artur Denisultanov killed near Selidovo as Chechen hit squads feature in Ukraine war

Artur Denisultanov, a 57-year-old from Gudermes with a lengthy criminal record who was widely reported in media accounts as a former “personal killer” associated with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, has been killed in combat in eastern Ukraine, according to leaked civil registry documents and identification by Ukrainian sources. Mediazona published the registry excerpt indicating Denisultanov died on November 2, 2024, near Selidovo in Donetsk region — an area of intense fighting during the summer and autumn months of 2024 that Ukrainian prosecutors later said saw killings of civilians by Russian forces.

Ukrainian investigators and the project “I Want to Live” reportedly identified Denisultanov by his dog tag number and linked him to service as an ordinary soldier in the 27th Motor Rifle Division — a unit known to have taken part in the 2000 storming of Grozny. The identification suggests that a man with a long history of criminal accusations and alleged involvement in targeted killings was serving in regular Russian military structures at the front.

Denisultanov’s biography, as documented in press reports and previous investigations, reads like a catalogue of criminality and transnational movement. He was first imprisoned in the early 1990s, amnestied after declarations by Ichkeria’s first president Djokhar Dudayev, later active in the St. Petersburg Chechen diaspora and implicated in kidnappings and extortion. After an escape episode following a 1998 kidnapping charge, he fled to Kharkiv under false papers, was detained, and returned to Russia only to be swapped in 1999 in exchange for a captured soldier while tensions and rival narratives surrounded that deal.

Denisultanov later fled to Germany, where he sought asylum and was linked to violent crime and extortion cases, and in 2008 appeared in Austria, where prosecutors say he claimed he had been tasked by Kadyrov to silence Umar Israyilov — a former insider who had accused the Chechen leadership of running secret prisons and torture. Austrian authorities denied him asylum and deported him to Russia; soon after, Israyilov was murdered in Vienna in 2009. Denisultanov retracted earlier testimony in which he described a Chechen unit formed to liquidate regime critics.

In 2017 Denisultanov resurfaced in Kyiv and attempted to assassinate Adam Osmayev, commander of the Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion, using a cover as a Le Monde correspondent; Osmayev’s wife, Amina Okuyeva, returned fire and severely wounded the attacker. Okuyeva herself was later killed in a separate attack. Denisultanov was detained in Ukraine but was reportedly exchanged in 2019 to the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic as part of a prisoner swap and then returned to fight on the separatist side before being sentenced in Moscow in 2023 for fraud and assigned to a general-regime colony — a punishment mitigated, authorities said, because of his prior participation in operations against Ukraine.

Denisultanov is not the only Chechen with allegations of involvement in political killings to have been sent to Ukraine. Names repeatedly linked in media and rights reporting include Usman Mamadiev, implicated in the 2020 killing of Chechen blogger Imran Aliyev (known as Mansur Star) in Lille, France; Sultan Rashaev (nicknamed “Borietsi” by the republic’s leadership), a figure whose firearms were connected to the 2006 killing of a deputy FSB colonel in Moscow; and Ruslan Geremeyev, accused in some reports of organizing the 2015 assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. Video and field reports showed Geremeyev in Mariupol in 2022, and he has since been placed by Chechen leadership in training roles for new fighters.

Human rights defenders and analysts warn that the deployment of men with such backgrounds creates layers of impunity and complicates any effort to hold perpetrators to account. Alexander Cherkasov, a rights defender quoted in coverage of Denisultanov’s death, emphasised a “graduation of loyalty” within these ranks: some operatives are promoted and integrated into formal security structures with protection and impunity, while others remain expendable, sent to the most dangerous frontline tasks with little guarantee of survival or legal protection. Cherkasov also highlighted unresolved questions about who was directing Denisultanov’s operations at various points — whether local Chechen structures, Russia’s federal security organs, or a hybrid arrangement — and how fabrications of cover identities were enabled.

The case of Denisultanov and the broader presence of Chechen units in Ukraine underline two interlocking human-rights concerns: the apparent recycling of alleged perpetrators of political murder and torture into combat roles, and the difficulty of establishing accountability when those men are killed, transferred between jurisdictions, or absorbed into opaque security chains. As long as questions about command, sponsorship and jurisdiction remain unanswered, victims and investigators face obstacles to establishing responsibility for past killings and preventing new abuses linked to wartime deployments.