Putin commends ‘invincible’ Russia during surprise trip to Chechnya

Vladimir Putin made his first visit to Chechnya for 13 years on Tuesday, meeting with the head of the North Caucasus republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, along with Chechen troops and volunteers preparing to fight Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Speaking to soldiers at a special forces academy in Gudermes that bears his name, Putin praised the recruits for making Russia “absolutely invincible”.

“It’s one thing to shoot at a shooting range here, and another thing to put your life and health at risk. But you have an inner need to defend the fatherland and the courage to make such a decision,” Putin said.

Putin then visited a newly built mosque where Kadyrov and the supreme mufti of Chechnya presented him with a certificate making him an honorary citizen of Chechnya. Kadyrov also showed Putin a model of a new residential neighbourhood in Grozny that’s also named after him.

Kadyrov, a key Kremlin ally who was appointed by Putin to head the republic in 2007 when he was just 30 years old, said in a post on his Telegram channel that Chechnya had sent more than 47,000 troops to Ukraine since the start of the war, including some 19,000 volunteers.

The visit came a day after billionaire Elon Musk denied gifting the Chechen warlord a Tesla cybertruck, after Kadyrov filmed himself riding the vehicle on Saturday.

Earlier on Tuesday Putin visited other North Caucasus regions including Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia. In North Ossetia he visited School No. 1 in Beslan, the site of a 2004 siege by Islamist militants that left more than 330 dead, the bloodiest incident of its kind in modern Russian history.

Speaking to mothers of children killed in the attack, Putin likened the attackers to the Ukrainian forces currently mounting an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, saying “just as we fought terrorists, today we have to fight those who commit crimes in the Kursk region.”

Chechnya holds particular political significance for Putin, who as the then newly-appointed prime minister launched the Second Chechen War in 1999 against separatist fighters in the predominantly Muslim territory, a war that proved central in his rise to power.