Does a video on social media show the Chechen army in preparation to be sent to Gaza by order of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov? No, that's not true: The footage shown is from August 2023, predating conflict in the Middle East that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @user6199269320331 on November 14, 2023.
The word "Mashallah," written in yellow letters visible at the top of the video, is an Arabic expression whose meaning in English translates as:
What Allah has willed has happened
The Bulgarian text, written in red letters, translated to English by Lead Stories staff, reads:
Ramzan Kadyrov is sending the Chechens to Palestine
The English text visible at the bottom of the video reads:
Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov army
🇷🇺 Chechnya Army's going to Palestine 🇵🇸
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Nov 28 07:09:16 2023 UTC)
A search for stills from the TikTok video (archived here) by Lead Stories conducted on November 28, 2023, using Google Lens, found only one relevant result due to text placed on top of the video interfering with the search results. An additional search performed on the image from this result (archived here) led to a video that perfectly matched that of the claim in a TikTok post dated August 13, 2023, almost two months before the current Hamas-Israel conflict started.
No posts or any information was found on the official Telegram channel of Chechen leader Kadyrov, which is regularly updated, to support the claim in the TikTok video.
There's no evidence or media reports from credible news sites to support the claim that Kadyrov is sending Chechen troops to Gaza. A search with a combination of the words "Kadyrov, Chechen, army, Gaza, and Palestine" (archived here) and a search for the phrase "Chechnya Army's going to Palestine" (archived here) performed by Lead Stories on November 28, 2023, using Google News' index of thousands of credible news sites, did not return any results.
