Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Chechnya, said Monday that he was in Ukraine alongside Russian forces who are leading an offensive in the country.
Kadyrov, who is accused by international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of serious human rights violations in the tightly controlled Caucasus republic, posted a video on Telegram of himself in military uniform studying plans around a table with soldiers in a room.
He said in a message that the video had been shot at Hostomel, an airfield near Kyiv captured by Russian forces in the first days of their offensive. This information could not be independently verified.
"The other day we were about 20 kilometers from you Kyiv Nazis and now we are even closer," Kadyrov wrote. "I will add an intrigue: maybe we are already in Kyiv and just waiting for the necessary orders?"
He called on Ukrainian forces to surrender "or you will be finished."
"We will show you that Russian practice teaches warfare better than foreign theory and the recommendations of military advisers," he added.
In the post, Kadyrov also threatened the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv and called on them to switch sides. "You can relax for a minute because you don't have to look for us – we'll find you ourselves," he continued.
Kadyrov, who rules Russia's Chechnya Republic with an iron fist, is a former rebel turned Kremlin ally with a paramilitary force at his command.
At the start of the Russian offensive, images circulated on social networks showing a square in the Chechen capital Grozny filled with soldiers claiming to be on their way to Ukraine.
Moscow fought two wars with separatists in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim region in southern Russia, after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. But it has since poured huge sums of money into the region to rebuild it and given Kadyrov a large measure of autonomy.
The Kremlin describes its actions in Ukraine as a "special operation" to demilitarize and "de-Nazify" Ukraine. Ukraine and Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice.
