Kadyrov criticizes Europe for failing to support Chechen independence

Responding to Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who remarked that Chechnya deserves to be an independent state, Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov posted a Telegram video with sharp criticisms of “certain incompetent European politicians.”

Morawiecki expressed his position on Chechen independence when interviewed by the French LCI TV network. “He says that Ichkeria should be supported,” said Kadyrov in his recorded rebuttal, continuing:

I have a question: Where have you been when we were fighting for Ichkeria and defending the interests of independence? And why didn’t the European states, including Ukraine, support us? But today, you suddenly decide to support a non-existent state?

In the video, dated January 28, the head of Chechnya insisted that he was once an “adamant Ichkerian.” “It was you who wouldn’t let us build a state,” he said, addressing the European governments.

Kadyrov’s remarks run against the grain of Russia’s official narrative, which has blamed the West for encouraging the separatist movement in Chechnya. In 2017, when giving a series of interviews to Oliver Stone, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin himself accused the U.S. of lending support the Chechen fighters.

In October 2022, Ukraine’s parliament passed a resolution to recognize the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as a territory “temporarily occupied by Russia.”