Russia is up against what seems like “the whole world,” Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov declared Sunday in a widely-viewed address on Telegram, explaining that “NATO Western states” which “consider themselves strong… are all against us.”
Western support for the regime in Kiev–via steady streams of heavy weaponry and foreign mercenaries–means Russia is effectively "at war with dozens of states,” Kadyrov said.
Kadyrov arrived in Mariupol alongside thousands of Chechen soldiers in March and has posted frequently on Telegram since then, providing viewers with daily updates of the situation on the ground in the besieged port city.
In his most recent post, Kadyrov noted that the collapse of the Western-backed puppet regime had left Ukraine with no real government, and echoed calls by the Russian Ministry of Defense for the Ukrainian nationalist elements which remain holed up in the Azovstal metallurgic plant to lay down their weapons and be spared their lives. While the precise number of militants still alive is unknown, the foreign mercenaries and remnants of the Ukrainian National Guard’s official Nazi regiment, the Azov battalion, who have attempted to surrender were threatened with execution, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Kadyrov went on to call Ukrainian officials “criminals,” and compared the situation Ukrainians are experiencing at the hands of the coup-born regime in Kiev to what the people of Chechnya went through in the 1990s and early 2000s, when "bandits" were also supplied with foreign weapons.