JAKARTA - Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of Russia's Chechen region and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Sunday he had traveled to Ukraine to meet Chechen forces invading Kyiv.
Chechen television channel Grozny posted a video on its Telegram social media channel earlier on Sunday, showing Kadyrov in a dark room discussing with Chechen troops, in a military operation they say is just 7 km from the Ukrainian capital.
The post did not specify where or when the meeting took place. It was not possible to independently verify whether he was in Ukraine, or had traveled there during the conflict.
However, Kadyrov later mocked other posts that cast doubt on whether he had traveled to the Kyiv region.
"Why 'if'? Did you not see the video", wrote Kadyrov on his official Telegram account.
As reported by The Moscow Times, Kadyrov said the video was taken at Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv that Russian troops captured in the first days of the invasion.
He said in a message that the video was shot at Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv that was captured by Russian forces in the first days of their offensive.
"One day we were about 20 km from you Kyiv Nazis and now we are closer", wrote Kadyrov.
He called on Ukrainian troops to surrender "or you will be exhausted."
"We will show you that Russian practice teaches warfare better than foreign theories and recommendations from military advisers", he added.
Kadyrov, who often describes himself as President Putin's 'foot soldier', has posted a video of heavily armed Chechen troops in the Kyiv region, as part of Russia's invasion force.
He has been repeatedly accused by the United States and the European Union of rights abuses, something Kadyrov denies.
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Moscow has fought two wars with separatists in Chechnya, a Muslim-majority region in southern Russia, after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
But since then Moscow has also poured large sums of money into the region to rebuild Chechnya, giving Kadyrov broad autonomy.
For information, the Kremlin described its actions in Ukraine as a 'special operation' for the demilitarization and 'denazification' of Ukraine, after being given the green light from President Putin on February 24.
Meanwhile, Ukraine and its Western allies called this a baseless pretext for an invasion.
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