“We cannot deny there are people in the United States who have extensive experience of licensed and ‘black’ special operations in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Private specialists from the USA are interested in our project. My aide who oversees the power bloc in the government, Daniil Martynov, has told me that he had received about 10 applications from US instructors, their names are well known in the professional community and we will study them,” Ramzan Kadyrov said in an interview with Interfax.
The Chechen leader emphasized that the vacancies in the counter-terrorist center can only be filled by Americans who work as private specialists because US state agencies have sanctions against them in the republic.
In the same interview, Kadyrov noted that he personally doubted that US Special Forces could teach their Chechen colleagues anything valuable because the Russian team took the first place in the recent ‘Annual Warrior’ competition in Jordan while the US team failed to get into the best 20 teams.
Kadyrov went on to describe the center, which is due to open in 2018. He said that the facility would have dozens of various training installations, including modern shooting ranges, swimming pools and climbing walls, an airfield and a large housing complex. However, he added that the infrastructure is not what makes the center unique.
“The center is not just dozens of sites, it is manned by top class specialists that have no equals in the world. They are winners of the world championship of Special Forces. There is no task that they cannot execute,” he said.
Kadyrov also disclosed that several foreign nations had already expressed interest in the center’s training programs. He noted that he could not disclose all details because many nations preferred to keep the identities of future trainees secret, but said that specialists would arrive from almost all countries of the CIS bloc, Argentina, Denmark, Belgium, South Africa, Philippines, Italy, Norway and others. The Chechen leader also said that the cooperation with China was already taking concrete forms.
In September, Kadyrov’s aide Martynov for the first time presented the project of the Chechen Special Forces training center to reporters and promised that it would invite US and other international instructors.
“We collect the best [training] practices from all across the world and then integrate them at our center,” he said.