Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Chechnya on Tuesday and met with the country’s head of state, Ramzan Kadyrov. It was his first visit to the North Caucasus region since 2011.
Kadyrov, a key Kremlin ally, says he has sent thousands of fighters to support the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine.
In May, Putin said he planned to visit Chechnya at Kadyrov’s invitation, adding: “I will do everything possible to ensure that this trip takes place.”
Footage released by the RIA Novosti news agency and Kadyrov shows Putin shaking hands with Kadyrov and other officials after disembarking from his helicopter in the capital, Grozny.
Putin then put his arm around Kadyrov’s shoulders and hugged him before they got into a limousine together.
Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that there would be a “packed program” of events.
“Despite the hard working day, Vladimir Vladimirovich is full of energy and ready to visit different places in Chechnya,” he wrote.
Putin had previously visited other regions of the North Caucasus on Tuesday, including Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia.
In North Ossetia, he visited the school in Beslan, where more than 330 people died in a siege by Chechen rebels in 2004, and knelt before a memorial.
Putin also met with mothers who had lost their children and compared the attackers to Ukrainians who are currently planning an invasion of Russia’s Kursk region.
Even though Putin has rarely visited Chechnya in recent years, the region has shaped him as a politician.
While he was still prime minister, he started the second Chechen war in 1999, which earned him a reputation as a strongman and made him popular with many Russians.
Putin supporter Kadyrov rules Chechnya with an iron fist, trying to crush an ongoing Islamist insurgency and all forms of dissent and carrying out a major reconstruction of the city of Grozny.
Putin appointed Kadyrov president in 2007, when he was just 30 years old, after his father, Akhmat Kadyrov, was assassinated by a bomb in a stadium in 2004.
On Tuesday, Putin began his visit by laying flowers at the grave of Akhmad Kadyrov, the Interfax news agency reported.
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