Free Republic

The head of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has expressed support for the Palestinians and called for a ceasefire and offered to send his troops to Palestine as part of a peacekeeping mission. In a statement, Kadyrov appealed to the international community to "make a fair decision regarding Palestine at least once."

The controversial head of Russia's Chechnya region, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been decorated as an "honored human rights defender of the Chechen Republic." He was cited for "outstanding services in the defense of the constitutional rights and liberties of the citizenry," according to Russian state media on March 24.

The withdrawal of Russian forces from a strategically important town in eastern Ukraine has prompted two powerful allies of President Vladimir Putin to do something rare in modern Russia: publicly ridicule the war machine's top brass. Russia's loss of the bastion of Lyman, which puts western parts of Luhansk region under threat, touched a nerve for Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya. Kadyrov, who has been close to Putin since his father and former president of Chechnya, Akhmad, was killed in a 2004 bomb attack in Grozny that also killed a Reuters photographer, suggested that...

AMSTERDAM — Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said on Wednesday that he had an 'open dialogue' with Russian President Vladimir Putin about human rights and the situation in Chechnya. Balkenende told a joint press conference in The Hague that the concerns about human rights abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya could not be ignored. He discussed these concerns with Putin in an open fashion, he said. Putin responded by telling the media that Russia was fighting 'beasts' in Chechnya. The Dutch and Russian leaders were talking to the press in the last hours of Putin's two-day visit to the...