Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan KadyrovGROZNY, March 18The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, announced a hundred civilians rescued by Chechen fighters in Mariupol — they were taken to a safe place and provided with everything necessary. «Our soldiers saved another hundred civilians. They took them to a safe place and provided the disadvantaged people with everything they needed — food, water, medicines, basic necessities. Now they are completely safe and under the protection of our fighters,» Kadyrov wrote in his channel Telegram.
Kadyrov explained why the fighters are in no hurry to liberate Mariupol⠀ At the time of the proclamation of the DPR in 2014, Mariupol, with a population of about 450 thousand people, was the second largest city in the republic after Donetsk. However, in June of that year, the Ukrainian security forces regained control of Mariupol, and its eastern suburbs became one of the hottest places of conflict in Ukraine. On March 7, 2022, Alexander Semyonov, deputy commander of the Vostok battalion of the DPR, said that the city was surrounded, and a cleansing of some of its districts had begun. Among other Ukrainian units in Mariupol, there is a nationalist regiment «Azov», against whose fighters a criminal case has been initiated in the Russian Federation. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops. With the support of the Russian Armed Forces, the DPR and LPR groups are developing an offensive, but there is no talk of the occupation of Ukraine, the President of Russia emphasized. imagining himself a world gendarme
