Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov requested the lifting of international sanctions imposed on his family in exchange for the release of 20 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Kadyrov said that Chechen soldiers captured Ukrainians during the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Russian media reports.
In Grozny, he showed a video in which those Ukrainians are also advocating for an exchange under the conditions he stated.
The Chechen leader said that the sanctions imposed on his mother, daughters and his horses should be lifted.
“Even if some more sanctions are imposed on me, we will let those people go anyway,” said Kadyrov.
Kadyrov is one of the closest supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been waging a devastating war against Ukraine for almost two years. Moscow therefore allows him to get away with tyranny and autocratic behavior in his country.
According to the Geneva Convention, Kadyrov is not allowed to treat Ukrainian prisoners of war as his private prisoners, and he is also not allowed to show them on video. He is also not authorized to negotiate.
The EU and the US imposed an entry ban on Kadyrov and his family and froze all their assets in their territories.
In the Czech Republic, a valuable horse allegedly belonging to Kadyrov, which disappeared under unsolved circumstances in 2023, was seized.
