With a helmet or a beret, the Chechen commander Apti Alaudinov is a familiar face to Russians on social networks, where he gives news, always positive, about the fight against the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region.
"Let's sit back, eat popcorn and watch our guys destroy the enemy," he said in early August, on the first day of the surprise cross-border offensive.
Unable to repel the Ukrainian troops for three weeks, the top of the Russian army is silent.
Apti Alaudinov (50) fills that gap by regularly posting videos that appear to have been taken near the front.
With around 275.000 subscribers on Telegram, he is far from an internet star, but his statements are picked up by Russian media, especially television.
He is the commander of the Akhmat special forces unit, which is made up of Chechen fighters, many of whom were sent to Ukraine by the leader of that Russian republic in the Caucasus, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Relying on his military status, he tries to reassure the Russians by claiming that "the enemy is almost stopped" or that the "situation is stabilizing", although the Ukrainians continue to advance.
He recently claimed that the war in Ukraine will end in two to three months.
For journalist Tikhon Zjadek, from the independent Russian media outlet Dožd, Apti Alaudinov's supremacy in the media is "unbelievable".
"Part of Russia is under the control of another country (...) and the main commentator of what is happening in the Kursk region is this funny character Alaudinov," he wrote on Telegram.
Such media presence necessarily received the approval of the highest authorities, according to AFP experts.
"I'm convinced it's being driven by the Kremlin," said Sarah Outs, a specialist at the University of Maryland in the US who studies Russian propaganda.
Georgi Bovt, a Moscow-based political analyst, notes that "for now, it obviously suits the leaders."
Like Ramzan Kadyrov, a loyal and talkative henchman of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Apti Alaudinov seems to enjoy an unusual freedom of speech.
Observers even presented him as a potential successor to the ruthless Chechen leader, whose health is said to be fragile.
When parents expressed concern that 18-year-old conscripts were mobilizing against the Ukrainian army, a very sensitive topic in Russia, Apti Alaudinov did not show empathy: "If they are not defending the motherland (...) why would your country need you and your children?" he asked in the video.
However, the Ministry of Defense has an official spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, whose purely factual and technical style is in radical contrast to the style of Apti Alaudinov, who "presents information in a more emotional way, which is probably easier for the public to receive", according to Georgi Bovt.
For Sarah Oates, Apti Alauddinov's "outrageous" statements are reminiscent of Vladimir Putin's style in his early days, when he promised to "kill terrorists even if they were in the toilets".
"I think he is an effective spokesman for propaganda," she added.
Apti Alaudinov grew up in the Stavropol region in southern Russia. His father and one of his brothers died in Chechnya, the scene of two wars in the 1990s and 2000s, while fighting with federal forces.
He later became Chechen police chief and deputy interior minister.
He has been sanctioned in several countries, including the US, on charges of kidnapping and torture.
Apti Alaudinov, "powerful and dangerous", has long been part of Kadyrov's "close guard", wrote the independent Russian newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" in 2016.
Vladimir Putin removed him from the Chechen government in 2021, which was seen as a sign of a falling out with Ramzan Kadyrov.
But in the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Chechen leader announced that his "dear brother" would lead the fighters from his republic.
Apti Alaudinov was awarded the prestigious "Medal of the Hero of Russia", but the unit he leads, Ahmat, is nicknamed the "TikTok Army" because it is suspected of prioritizing efficiency on social media over combat.
She was helping to protect the Kursk region when Ukrainian forces suddenly invaded there.
In an unusually sombre video, Apti Alaudinov admitted that Kiev's soldiers "did a good job," but "the only thing they didn't take into account is that God loves Russia."
Bonus video:
