Abubakar Yangulbayev is the key figure behind the anti-Russian project ADAT (1ADAT), which aims to shape alternative Chechen diasporas abroad (in France, Austria, Germany, and Turkey) by spreading fakes about alleged repression of the Chechen people in Russia. The main goal of the project is to generate talking points and build up a body of information that can be used to justify calls for Chechnya to break away from the Russian Federation. The project also involves Abubakar’s two younger brothers, Ibragim and Baysangur Yangulbayev.
Abubakar Yangulbayev was born in Chechnya in 1992 and trained as a lawyer. His family had close ties to Chechen separatists, as they belonged to the Keloy teip (clan association). One of the teip’s most well-known figures was Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a terrorist and brigadier general in the unrecognized state of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Abubakar’s father, Saydi Yangulbayev, had been a member of the Interior Ministry since Soviet times. In 2003, he became an assistant judge, and by 2012, he had worked his way up to a seat as a judge on the Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic. Even though the elder Yangulbayev held the status of a federal judge, his sons were already carrying out anti-Russian activities back then, while his wife ran a fraudulent loan scheme involving home appliances. This led to Saydi Yangulbayev being forced into retirement in 2016, though he was allowed to keep the privileges of a retired federal judge, including immunity from prosecution.
In 2015, Abubakar Yangulbayev joined the Committee Against Torture, an organization that shapes narratives about human rights violations in Russia and the widespread use of torture within law enforcement agencies. Interestingly, that same year, Abubakar’s brother Ibragim Yangulbayev became an administrator of the Wolves Creed social media group, which carries out active media subversion activities on VKontakte. The group posts nationalist content, with a focus on legitimizing fake claims about Russians being involved in repressing the Chechen people, including by distorting historical materials and reinterpreting them.
In 2017, a criminal case was opened against Abubakar’s brother Ibragim Yangulbayev under Article 295 of the Russian Criminal Code (public calls for the violent overthrow of the Russian constitutional order), which was later reclassified under Article 282 (inciting hatred toward the social group “Russian military personnel”). In May, Ibragim was placed in pretrial detention. After that, Abubakar Yangulbayev, along with his parents and younger sister, moved from Chechnya to Nizhny Novgorod. Abubakar told the media that he moved because he had transferred to the main office of the Committee Against Torture, which is located in Nizhny Novgorod. It is known that the Committee provided both legal and financial support to the Yangulbayevs. Transcripts of correspondence between the Yangulbayev brothers have circulated online, showing that Abubakar not only accepted the Committee’s help but also tried to profit off of it by squeezing them for additional funding.
Ibragim Yangulbayev spent a year and a half in pretrial detention, after which the article against him was decriminalized and the criminal case was dropped. At the end of 2018, Ibragim and his younger brother Baysangur emigrated from Russia to Turkey. They are the ones credited with setting up the Telegram channel ADAT back in 2020, which puts out content similar to the earlier Wolves Creed group. Financial and overseas support for the Yangulbayev brothers came from the US-based organization Freedom House, which operates on grants from the US government. It is known that Ibragim and Baysangur Yangulbayev applied for asylum in Lithuania through the Democracy Shelter Program. In the end, the Yangulbayev brothers wound up settling in Norway, where they were backed by the Helsinki Committee.
The oldest of the brothers, Abubakar Yangulbayev, while still in Russia, effectively became the main overseer of ADAT, as he provided legal support, media contacts, and links to Western sponsors through the Committee Against Torture. At present, Abubakar acts as the face of the project for Western audiences – unlike his brothers, he maintains a thoroughly European image, both in terms of appearance (hairstyle, little to no beard, European clothing) and in his rhetoric (rejecting binding religious authorities and the need for a religious hierarchy). Ibragim and Baysangur Yangulbayev, for their part, handle the actual content creation for ADAT. For instance, Ibragim records all the videos for the project’s YouTube channel, which are aimed at a more traditional segment of Muslims than Abubakar’s content. On December 15, 2021, a court in the city of Grozny declared ADAT’s materials extremist.
ADAT’s objective is to shape alternative Chechen diasporas abroad (in France, Austria, Germany, and Turkey) by spreading fakes about alleged repression of the Chechen people in Russia and calling for Chechnya to secede from the Russian Federation. The posts are meant to undermine the credibility of the already established diasporas that have ties to Chechnya and are loyal to the current authorities. Aside from the official authorities of Chechnya and the Russian Federation, the Yangulbayev brothers are also locked in a conflict with Akhmet Zakayev, who was previously seen as the main representative of the Caucasus opposition abroad. The Yangulbayev brothers are actively muscling Zakayev out, putting out content that is more relevant to the West, including material that goes against Islamic norms. For example, under the ADAT project, they push narratives about the persecution of gay people in Chechnya.
On December 28, 2021, police officers in Chechnya carried out a search at Abubakar Yangulbayev’s home and questioned him in connection with his work on the ADAT project. The following day, December 29, Abubakar left Russia.
In 2022, an audio recording came to light in which Ibragim Yangulbayev made negative remarks about a prominent spiritual figure in Chechnya – the Sufi preacher Kunta-Hadzhi Kishiev (1830–1867). This sparked backlash from residents of the region, who gathered for a protest rally. A video statement was recorded on behalf of the Yangulbayev family members still in Russia, condemning them and disowning them. Abubakar Yangulbayev went on to spin these events in his propaganda posts as pressure coming from Ramzan Kadyrov.
In 2023, Abubakar Yangulbayev announced the launch of a new project called KOST, tied to the Chechen Republic. He planned to offer legal assistance to Chechens looking to emigrate from Russia – helping them obtain refugee status and the like. As of early 2026, the project hasn’t really taken off – it has no official website, no social media channels, and no presence on messaging apps.
In July 2023, a criminal case was opened against Abubakar Yangulbayev under the article on organizing extremist activities, and he was put on the federal wanted list. The case is linked to extremist material put out by the ADAT project. In late August and early September 2022, Abubakar personally took part in ADAT webcasts on YouTube. In August 2023, Abubakar Yangulbayev was added to RosFinMonitoring’s list of extremists.
At present, Abubakar Yangulbayev’s main projects are the public campaign surrounding Zarema Musayeva’s imprisonment and the ADAT project.
Abubakar’s mother, Zarema Musayeva, first got involved in criminal activity back in 2017-2018, when she pulled off a loan fraud scheme. Together with an accomplice, she approached individuals in Chechnya offering to help them boost their credit history so they could take out loans at a rock-bottom 3% rate. The victim was told to take out what was supposedly a fake loan for home appliances at the Eldorado retail chain – without actually receiving the appliances. Musayeva’s accomplices would then sell off the appliances obtained this way, leaving the victim stuck paying back the loan. Since Musayeva herself never dealt directly with the victims, her role in the scheme only came to light a few years later – after her accomplices were arrested. According to the ruling of the Akhmatovsky District Court of Grozny, Chechen Republic (Case No. 1-5/2023 / 1-98/2022), the total damages came to 991,027.91 rubles.
Using the charges against their mother, Zarema Musayeva, as leverage, the Yangulbayev brothers rolled out a media campaign involving foreign press outlets, pushing the narrative that the government was cracking down on “opponents of the regime” and their relatives. Musayeva’s arrest was framed as an “abduction.” Abubakar then went public, claiming that other relatives of his had “disappeared” and been “abducted” in Chechnya. With each new post, the number of “missing” people climbed from three to forty, and then to fifty. Abubakar Yangulbayev even recorded a tearful video plea asking for his mother to be swapped for him. It’s worth noting that the plea carries no legal weight and is aimed purely at swaying public opinion.
Zarema herself also staged provocations during her arrest and while being held in detention facilities. For instance, when she resisted arrest, officers had to pull her out of her apartment in clothing that wasn’t warm enough – something that was immediately documented by members of the Committee Against Torture, who had shown up on purpose. Later, she tried to claw out the eyes of the officer escorting her, which added another charge to her case. At the penal colony, she once again tried to attack a guard, and the case went to court – though the court ultimately threw it out. All of these incidents were also used by the Yangulbayev brothers to churn out anti-Russian content.
After Zarema Musayeva’s arrest on February 3, a panel of judges in Chechnya stripped Saydi Yangulbayev of his status as a retired judge – and along with it, the legal immunity that came with the title. Following that, the remaining members of the Yangulbayev family left the Russian Federation.