A lot of the foreign insurgents in the Donbas are Kadyrovtsy--Chechens. Not a couple S. Ossetians have also been detained or proudly proclaimed who they were on social media sites. And S. Ossetia is one of the few "state allies" that the LNR and DNR has.
Wyborcza gazeta explained, once, long ago, the Chechen connection. In the '90s, during the first down-putting of the Chechen uprising, a number of Ukrainians participated in what can only be described as brutal acts in and around Groznyi. Things were spun after the fact to shift the burden from the Russians (with whom the Chechens eventually had to make peace) to the Ukrainians--this allowed peace to be agreed to with a far greater loss of face. However, having spread not just a rationale but a necessity for a kind of inter-tribal blood feud, those bound by tribal honor are now stuck with the blood feud or honestly believed the face-saving rationale.
It also gives Kadyrov and the S. Ossetians a place to put their honor-starved young men who are convinced that their true honor lies in killing somebody. Better the "ukropy" as far as their regions' political leaders are concerned than them; better the "ukropy" than Russians, as far as their Russian masters are concerned. So for them its a win-win-win. For truth, it's a loss-loss-loss, but some kinds of honor rely more on perception than truth.
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