Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Chechnya on Tuesday and met with its leader Ramzan Kadyrov on his first visit to the North Caucasus region since 2011.
Kadyrov, a key Kremlin ally, says he has deployed thousands of fighters to the Kremlin in its offensive in Ukraine.
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Putin said in May that he planned to stop in Chechnya at Kadyrov’s invitation, saying: “I will do everything imaginable to make this vacation a reality. “
Footage released via the news firm RIA Novosti and Kadyrov showed Putin shaking hands with Kadyrov and other officials after stepping off his helicopter in the main city of Grozny.
Putin then put an arm around Kadyrov’s shoulders and hugged him as they climbed into a limousine together.
Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that there would be a “busy schedule” of events.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich, despite a hard day’s work, is full of energy and able to stopover at various places in Chechnya,” he wrote.
Putin visited regions of the North Caucasus on Tuesday, including Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia.
In North Ossetia, he visited the Beslan school where more than 330 people were killed in a 2004 siege by Chechen rebels and knelt before a monument.
Putin also met with mothers who lost their children and with attackers at the hands of Ukrainians who are recently preparing an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
Although Putin has rarely visited Chechnya in recent years, the region has him as a politician.
He introduced the Second Chechen War in 1999 when he was still prime minister, which helped shape his reputation as a strongman and made him popular with many Russians.
Kadyrov, loyal to Putin, ruled Chechnya with an iron fist, seeking to eliminate a persistent Islamist and the entire dissident bureaucracy, and massively rebuild Grozny.
Putin appointed Kadyrov as the country’s new leader in 2007, when he was just 30 years old, after his father Akhmat Kadyrov was bombed to death at a stadium in 2004.
On Tuesday, Putin began his stop by laying flowers at Akhmat Kadyrov’s grave, the Interfax news firm reported.
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