Chechen Leader Kaydrov Believes Russia Can Take Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa from Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin with Ramzan Kadyrov. (Wikimedia Commons/kremlin.ru/Yelakut mengguh-mencultus pencula olahrab olahrab olahrab olahrab olahrabohmenmen nyambuh

JAKARTA - The leader of Chechnya's region Ramzan Kadyrov said in an interview Monday that Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine by the end of this year, judging the pace of negotiations with President Volodymyr Zelensky to be wrong.

Kadyrov's forces have played a key role in the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded nearly a year ago, and he has forged informal alliances with the increasingly prominent Wagner militia chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and other war-supporting nationalist hardliners.

In an interview broadcast on state television's main channel Rossiya-1, he said Russia had the strength to take the capital Kyiv, from which it was pushed back in the early weeks of the war, and that it needed to take Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv and its main port, Odessa.

"I am sure that, by the end of the year, we will 100 percent complete the tasks set for us today," Kadyrov said.

With neither side ready to make concessions, there seemed little prospect of peace talks since the early months of the war.

Nevertheless, Kadyrov told interviewer Olga Skabeyeva, who hosts a pro-war chat show: "If we sit down at the negotiating table with Zelensky, yes, I think that's wrong."

Kadyrov is a former Chechen separatist fighter who switched sides in the late 1990s, joining the pro-Russian government in the restive Caucasus region with his family.

His father was killed by pro-independence militants in 2004, and Russian President Vladimir Putin personally appointed him leader of Chechnya in 2007.