The city has already been razed to the ground – now warmonger Vladimir Putin (69) is letting go of one of his most brutal loyalists: Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov (45) is said to have arrived in besieged Mariupol – and is threatening the worst there. At least that’s how he puts it on his social media channels.
Chechen minister Akhmed Dudayev told Russian news agency Ria Novosti on Monday: “Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is in Mariupol to increase the fighting spirit of our fighters.”
The agency published a photo of Kadyrov with about 20 Chechen fighters in response to Dudayev’s remarks. Also in the photo were Deputy Adam Delimkhanov and what appeared to be a boy.
Chechen militants pose with the Russian flagPhoto: RIA Novosti
Russian television also showed footage of Kadyrov’s meeting with Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev. The sequence shows the two hugging, followed by a vigorous handshake and an icy smile for the cameras. The video should show the two meeting in Mariupol. Mordvichev is one of the Russian generals killed in a skirmish, according to Ukrainian officials.
Kadyrov himself also showed a snippet on Telegram. I heard him greet the Russian general with an effervescent “Welcome.” Whether the videos and photos are authentic and up-to-date was not initially able to independently verify.
But there are also doubts about Kadyrov’s true whereabouts: another video by Chechen “state television”, said to have come from Monday and posted on YouTube on Tuesday, shows Kadyrov with, among others, the leader of the self-proclaimed ” Donetsk People’s Republic”, Denis Puschilin.
As a reminder, shortly before the start of the Russian invasion, Kremlin puppet Pushilin addressed Putin in a televised speech and asked him to recognize the independence of the “People’s Republic” in eastern Ukraine. Putin then signed a corresponding decree.
So it is also quite possible that Kadyrov is not in Mariupol, as he claims, but in reality in Donetsk or Novoazovsk – or that the video was shot on the Russian side.
Chechens want to take city hall
However, according to his own statements, Kadyrov and his fighters now want to take Mariupol along with the Russians; According to Minister Dudayev, Kadyrov will help fine-tune Mariupol’s “liberation” strategy. Kadyrov himself wrote on Telegram that the “cleansing” of the port city bombed by “Nazi bandits” was “in full swing”. He promised that Mariupol “will be completely freed in a very short time”.
As Dudayev announced, Kadyrov was elevated to the rank of lieutenant general by Kremlin ruler Putin. Officially, Kadyrov belongs to the National Guard and previously held the rank of major general.
Chechen fighters are said to have taken control of the Mariupol town hall last week and hoisted their flag over the building.
Kadyrov posted a video on Telegram on Thursday that allegedly showed a phone call between Russian MP Adam Delimkhanov and “brave” Chechen fighters.
In the video, Putin’s hound said: “The guys are broadcasting over the radio that they freed the building from the Mariupol authorities and raised our flag on it” and “escaped”.
Referring to the nationalist Azov brigade, he added: “Other units are advancing in parallel through the city, cleaning up Azov’s mess. God willing, Mariupol will soon be squeaky clean.”
Mariupol has been under siege by Russian troops since the beginning of the war. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, nearly 100,000 people in the city are without access to water, food and electricity.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry wrote on Twitter that the Russian army launched a “new phase of terror against Mariupol” and kidnapped around 6,000 people to Russian camps.
The conquest of Mariupol is one of the central goals of Kremlin warmonger Vladimir Putin: by taking the city, he wants to close the strategically important corridor between Crimea, which was annexed in violation of international law in 2014, and the self-proclaimed “people of the people”. “. republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk and the Russian mainland. To achieve his goal, he had hospitals, a maternity hospital and a theater in the city bombed, where more than 1,000 people were sheltered.