Investigations
As Germany cancels humanitarian visas for anti-war Russians, loyalists of Ramzan Kadyrov continue to travel back and forth between Chechnya and Germany as if nothing has happened, having previously obtained residence permits in Germany on humanitarian grounds. Among them is Hussein Agaev, Kadyrov’s official representative in Hamburg, who is actively involved in clashes between criminal groups. At the same time, Agaev and his closest Chechen associates run logistics companies that have access to German ports and rail hubs. While German intelligence services arrest one Russian-hired spy after another for photographing trains and ships, Kadyrov’s loyalists enjoy legal access to Germany’s most vulnerable objects of critical infrastructure.
This is a joint investigation with Der Spiegel.
On Oct. 30, the Munich Higher Regional Court handed down a verdict against three defendants in a case involving espionage on behalf of Russia and the preparation of acts of sabotage, sentencing the main defendant to six years in prison. All three held dual Russian and German citizenship. According to investigators, from October 2023 to April 2024 the spies gathered information on the movement of military equipment, a refinery in Bavaria, and the deployment of U.S. troops near Grafenwöhr in Upper Palatinate.
This case is far from an isolated incident: in recent years, Russia has mounted large-scale espionage operations on German territory, actively recruiting people with dual citizenship. Typical tasks assigned by Russian intelligence officers to people on the ground include photographing infrastructure and energy facilities and tracking the movement of trains.
Such operations are conducted all across Germany, but especially intensively at transportation and shipping hubs — chief among them Hamburg, home to Germany’s largest seaport. The port is integrated with a rail network extending more than 300 km internally, allowing cargo to be rapidly transshipped and dispatched to all parts of Europe.
Police and intelligence services have long noted Russia’s strong interest in Hamburg. However, as The Insider has found, Russia does not even need to send spies in order to monitor rail traffic from the Port of Hamburg. Companies owned by figures close to Chechnya head Ramzan Kadyrov operate entirely openly in the city, providing security for logistics facilities. Despite previously having been granted asylum in Europe, these Kadyrov loyalists continue to make regular trips to Russia.
Kadyrov’s envoys in Germany
Officially, no position called a “representative of Ramzan Kadyrov in Europe” exists. Nevertheless, the Chechen authorities actively use this title, and de facto, such representation does indeed operate on German territory, if not all across Europe. In 2020, when a conflict erupted in Germany between the Chechen mafia and the Arab Remmo crime clan, a demonstrative reconciliation meeting featured world boxing champion Manuel Charr on the Arab side and European mixed martial arts champion Timur Dugazaev on the Chechen side — Dugazaev was there as the “official representative of the head of the Chechen Republic.”
Kadyrov and Dugazaev
Dugazaev and Charr (center of the photo, embracing) during the reconciliation of Arab and Chechen groups in Germany
Dugazaev arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2002 — at a time when Akhmat Kadyrov, Ramzan’s father, was still in power in Chechnya — and received refugee status in 2005 after Ramzan became president of the republic. In 2011, Dugazaev obtained German citizenship, a status that did not prevent the “refugee” from becoming Kadyrov’s representative in 2014 and regularly flying to Chechnya.
At times the hospitality worked the other way around, with Dugazaev receiving high-profile guests from Chechnya in Germany — for example, Abuzayd Vismuradov (pictured to the left of Dugazaev), the commander of the Chechen SOBR Terek unit and now the deputy prime minister of Chechnya. As part of his official duties, Vismuradov organized the torture and murder of gay men in Chechenya, and he is implicated in several other crimes. “Brothers are always and everywhere together!” Dugazaev captioned their joint photo in 2017.
In 2020, Dugazaev was placed under U.S. sanctions together with Kadyrov for human rights violations, but no official claims were brought against him in Europe. Nevertheless, he returned to Chechnya, and the position of the “chief Kadyrov figure in Europe” was taken over by his associate, Hussein (Saikhan) Agaev, who also arrived on “humanitarian” grounds (Agaev too appears in the reconciliation photo of the Chechen and Arab clans published above, far left). Like Dugazaev, Agaev is very close to Kadyrov. In one Instagram video posted from a wedding in Chechnya in 2017, Agaev greets Kadyrov as an honored guest.
The new “representative of Chechnya in Germany” Hussein Agaev with Ramzan Kadyrov
In 2024, at a congress in Grozny, the “refugee” Agaev appeared on official Chechen television as the “representative of the Chechen diaspora in Germany” — evidently, after the sanctions imposed on Dugazaev, the authorities removed the risky “representative of Kadyrov” from their emissary’s unofficial title. At the congress, Agaev stressed that Chechens should be proud of Kadyrov.
According to flight database records, Agaev visits Chechnya every year, as does his son Selim, who is registered at an address on Putin Avenue in Grozny. Like Dugazaev, the younger Agaev is a mixed martial arts fighter, albeit on a lower level — not a European champion, but only the champion of Northern Germany.
Selim Agaev represents the Hamburg-based Roland club, where many other members of the Chechen diaspora train and compete. This club is part of a network of Chechen MMA clubs across Europe, with many fighters working in various branches of the security industry. Some of these well-trained combat athletes are involved in providing protection for criminal enterprises, a source in the German police told The Insider. According to him, their exceptional cohesion and readiness for violence make members of the Chechen diaspora especially prominent in the criminal underworld.
Hussein and Selim Agaev have themselves already appeared in police reports: according to a Der Spiegel source, in early May in Schleswig-Holstein the Agaevs beat up their business partner right in a lawyer’s office (the partner allegedly owed them tens of thousands of euros). According to the source, the victim unsuccessfully tried to jump out of a window but was ultimately forced to hand over the money. Agaev’s lawyer claims that the source’s description “does not even remotely correspond” to what happened, but German authorities are nevertheless conducting several other investigations involving Agaev, including on the suspicion of aggravated robbery and the alleged fencing of stolen goods as part of criminal group activity.
But more importantly, alongside standard crime, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine Germany has increasingly been troubled by a new problem: Russia-directed sabotage and espionage. Today this often takes the form of recruitment through anonymous Telegram accounts that offer small payments to participants on the ground. Recruits are asked, for example, to covertly photograph the movement of trains and ships. But in the case of Saikhan Agaev, there is no need to do anything covertly — he openly and legally heads a logistics company that has access to all the information the Kremlin is after.
The mob's presence at the logistical heart of Europe
Hussein (Saikhan) Agaev heads RIM-Group, a company founded in 2012 and specializing in logistics and security. On its Instagram account, the company showcased examples of its work at the Port of Hamburg.
Whether this specific company continues to operate in the port is unclear, but it is known that Agaev’s Chechen circle is linked to other logistics companies working all across Germany. For example, Agaev’s partner Ali Itaev, who appears with him in many photos, worked at the firm International Logistics (he also regularly flies to Russia and was in Moscow, for instance, in the summer of 2025). His photos with Agaev’s son also feature figures who work at DIS Personaldienstleistung GmbH, a company that is active in warehouse logistics throughout Germany.
A group of Chechens from Agaev’s circle identify themselves with the club Regime-95 (95 being Chechnya’s regional code) and wear merchandise bearing its symbols.
Officially, this is merely an MMA sports club, but for some reason its representatives visibly enjoy taking group photos against the backdrop of images of Al Capone and caption their pictures with the hashtag “gang.” Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office has already taken note of this group in the context of organized crime.
Concerns that Chechen groups could be used by Russian intelligence services are also shared by German law enforcement agencies. As far back as 2019, they noted that Chechen mafia groups were attempting to gain access to confidential information from German security bodies. Now, as German intelligence services conclude that their country has become a major target for Russian hybrid attacks, the level of access that Chechen groups have to German infrastructure facilities is further raising alarms.
How Kadyrov loyalists cause harm to Chechens
Hussein Agaev not only “represents” Chechnya in Europe but also helps Chechen migrants find jobs in friendly companies, thereby gaining additional authority and loyalty, sources in the Chechen diaspora told The Insider. In the end, however, Agaev’s activities cast a shadow over all Chechens in Europe, even though far from the entire diaspora supports Kadyrov.
Stories about Chechens arriving on humanitarian grounds and then, as if nothing were amiss, repeatedly returning to the republic and openly praising Kadyrov sit poorly with both local residents and migration authorities, prompting them to treat refugees fleeing genuine persecution with greater suspicion.
Against the backdrop of the rising popularity of right-wing populist parties and growing anti-immigration sentiment in Germany, the actions of Agaev and his team could further complicate the situation for Chechen migrants and asylum seekers, who already face frequent deportations due to suspicions of links to Islamic fundamentalist movements. Naturally, the increasing number of Russian acts of sabotage targeting German infrastructure facilities provides ample grounds for similar suspicion.