Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov. File photoGROZNY, April 1 The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said in a video on his Telegram channel that he gave the militants who had settled at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol one day to lay down their arms and surrender.
"I know that you want to give up, I have your negotiations, conversations. You cannot decide who to surrender to, who will leave you, who will not beat you, humiliate you. I give you my word, if you lay down your arms, come out yourself, then we will not touch you … I am sure that if you take the right path, as we have in the Chechen Republic, the president can declare an amnesty, and you can fall under amnesty… Tomorrow you have one day, and the day after tomorrow we will destroy you all", he said in the video.
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. Currently, there are battles for liberation going on in the city. 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 abuse, genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» The United States will send more Javelin MANPADS to Ukraine. 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 Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops and, on March 25, completed the main tasks of the first stage — significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.