Ukrainian intelligence tells about putin's order to Kadyrov to kill Zelensky

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov received the task to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the russian President in early February 2022, when he visited the kremlin.

Source. The Wall Street Journal citing Ukrainian intelligence data, Agentstvo reports.

Details. Three weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, putin summoned Kadyrov to moscow. At the meeting, a strategy was developed for Chechen units, and Kadyrov was instructed to take Kyiv and kill President Zelensky, the newspaper writes.

Chechen units entered Ukraine on February 25, the day after the invasion. In a video intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence and viewed by the WSJ, a senior Chechen security official reports:

“The time is exactly 12 midnight. We are starting to move. More than 1500 personnel, the best special forces, the best fighters.”

Kadyrov's troops entered Ukraine in three columns of armoured vehicles. One of them was almost completely destroyed on the outskirts of Kyiv, the other two stopped the offensive to regroup before reaching the capital of Ukraine.

When the blitzkrieg on Kyiv failed, Kadyrov decided to resort to hidden mobilisation in Chechnia, WSJ writes.

One of the interviewees of the outlet, who fled from Chechnya in August, said that not only the authorities but also religious leaders were engaged in recruitment. They went to gyms and computer clubs and offered up to 300 thousand rubles for participation in the war.

According to human rights activists, Chechen security forces took to the war the most vulnerable categories of residents of the republic – debtors, convicted or suspected of LGBT relations. A man who was detained for criticising Kadyrov said that a police officer asked him if he wanted to go to fight in Ukraine. When he refused, the officer threatened him that he would return to prison if he did not go to the nearest military base the next day.

Later, the tasks of the Chechen units in Ukraine were changed: from the end of the summer they began to act as barrier troops, stopping the retreat of the russian military, as a representative of Ukrainian military intelligence told WSJ.

After the end of hostilities in the russian-occupied territories, Kadyrov's troops conduct “mop-up operations”: they search for Ukrainian spies and guerrillas in the occupied settlements.

“They do the dirtiest work, they torture,” says Maria Davidson, head of the Swedish group for the protection of the rights of Chechen emigrants.

The Times, the British outlet, wrote that the task to kill the President of Ukraine was also given to the mercenaries of the Wagner PMC. In February, they penetrated into Kyiv. Their “execution list” also included 23 other high-ranking Ukrainian officials.