In an interview with Ria Novosti in Grozny, published on Sunday, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who has always been “lukewarm” about talk of the end of the war in Ukraine, said there can only be peace when Ukraine “becomes a region or district of Russia.”
He said once again that he did not support the halting of military action in the zone of the so-called “special military operation (SVO)” as he said it would be “unprofitable” to stop now. Kadyrov said that, in his opinion “…the goals and objectives of the SVO were not taken out of thin air” and that the security of Russia and securing “peace on it borders” would be possible only when Ukraine has been defeated.
Kadyrov’s comments not only echo recent statements made by Russia’s political and military leaders but may indicate concerns for his own future. On Sept.1 Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) filed war crimes charges against him for calls he made to kill captured Ukrainian soldiers on the spot and the use of prisoners as “human shields” to protect Chechen military facilities from Ukrainian drone strikes – even though he later rescinded his orders.
In a televised briefing by Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov at the end of August he claimed that “the strategic initiative is entirely with Russian troops,” calling for the creation of “buffer zones” in the regions of Kharkiv and Sumy and for continued “offensive actions” in all directions.
Behind Gerasimov as he spoke was a map which military commentators said showed large areas of currently unoccupied parts of Ukraine enclosed within a thick black line. This included the entirety of the four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – partially annexed in 2014 and 2022 – along with the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa.
Russian Leader Vladimir Putin has stated on numerous occasions that he considers that Ukraine belongs to Russia – and Gerasimov’s map reinforces the view this basic tenet for launching Putin’s full-scale invasion has not been affected by what many perceive as his failed attempt to conquer Kyiv.
At the start of September, following months of prevarication by Putin and his negotiators towards US calls for peace, it became clear that Russian forces were preparing a new offensive in Ukraine. It was reported that the Kremlin had transferred 100,000 troops into the sector around the city of Pokrovsk, the capture of which would open the way to occupy the rest of the Donbas.
At the same time Putin said that Ukraine should abandon the region and freeze the war along the current contact lines, in exchange for peace – a proposal that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed out of hand:
“If tomorrow we somehow leave Donbas, which will not happen, we will open up an unprotected space for Putin, close to the city of Kharkiv, with a population of one and a half million along with industrial centers along the Dnipro [River].” He said this would be used as a springboard to seize all of Ukraine and open Europe to attack.
Despite the claims of Gerasimov and Russian propagandists that his forces are in the ascendency, after three and a half years of war, Putin’s army holds around 20 percent of Ukraine and has seized only a further one percent in the last year.
According to the UK’s former Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, said that if Putin’s forces progress at the same rate it would take more than another four years to seize the territory shown on the Russian Ministry of Defense’s map. If the admiral’s assessment is correct and given reports of Kadyrov’s state of health he is unlikely to see the “reabsorption” of Ukraine he craves.