(Reuters) – Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya area and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, mentioned on Sunday that he had travelled into Ukraine to meet Chechen troops attacking Kyiv.
Reuters couldn’t independently confirm whether or not he was in Ukraine or had travelled there in the course of the battle.
Chechen tv channel Grozny posted a video on its Telegram social media channel earlier on Sunday that confirmed Kadyrov in a darkened room discussing with Chechen troops a navy operation they mentioned occurred 7 km (4.3 miles) from the Ukrainian capital.
The submit didn’t clarify the place or when the assembly had taken place.
Later Kadyrov made enjoyable of one other submit that solid doubt on whether or not he had travelled to the Kyiv area.
“Why ‘if’? Did you not see the video,” Kadyrov wrote on his official Telegram account.
Kadyrov, who has usually described himself as Putin’s “foot soldier”, has posted movies of closely armed Chechen troops within the Kyiv area as a part of Russia’s invasion power.
He has been repeatedly accused by the United States and European Union of rights abuses, which he denies.
Moscow fought two wars with separatists in Chechnya, a primarily Muslim area in southern Russia, after the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. But it has since poured enormous sums of cash into the area to rebuild it and given Kadyrov a big measure of autonomy.
The Kremlin describes its actions in Ukraine as a “particular operation” to demilitarise and “deNazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies name this a baseless pretext for a warfare of alternative.
(Reporting by Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
