Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says his cousin and close ally Adam Delimkhanov is “alive and well” after a flurry of reports Wednesday said the Chechen lawmaker was wounded or possibly killed on the battlefield in Ukraine.
According to Kadyrov, the panic over Delimkhanov’s condition in the Russian media was all a ploy and he was never even wounded.
“I knew this from the very beginning of the fake story, but I decided to show everyone, primarily the Ukrainians, how low their media have sunk,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram, along with a photo of himself with Delimkhanov.
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Russian state-controlled media had earlier reported that Delimkhanov, a deputy of the State Duma who was awarded the title of Hero of Russia by President Vladimir Putin, had been wounded in Ukraine but was still alive, citing the press service of the State Duma. But a short time later, the State Duma’s press service denied having ever given that comment, and one after another, lawmakers got in line to assure that Delimkhanov was perfectly fine and not even wounded.
But Kadyrov further stoked speculation when he took to Telegram to sound the alarm over what he described as Delimkhanov’s disappearance. Kadyrov said he could not get hold of Delimkhanov and had no idea where he was. And in a wild plot twist, the Chechen leader who for months has cheered on the killing of Ukrainians then appealed to Ukrainian authorities for help.
“I am asking Ukrainian intelligence to provide information on exactly what place and what positions were hit, so that I can still find my dear BROTHER,” Kadyrov wrote Wednesday.
“I promise a generous reward and I ask you to help.”
The Kremlin also chimed in on the saga, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters, “We received this information with great concern, we are worried like everyone else for the Hero of Russia. We are hoping that in the very near future there will be some updated information about what happened.”
Bizarrely, a Chechen commander who was quoted by Russian state media as saying Delimkhanov was “more alive than all the living” and back home in Chechnya later wrote on Telegram that he had been ordered by Kadyrov to “travel to the scene of the incident” and “find [Delimkhanov] by any means necessary.”
Russia’s RIA Novosti then reported that Chechen fighters had been pulled from their positions on the frontline to aid in the search for Delimkhanov.
Unconfirmed reports had circulated earlier in Ukrainian media claiming that the Chechen lawmaker had been killed by Ukraine during a strike in the Zaporizhzhia region. Just a day earlier, Delimkhanov had been seen in a video declaring that Chechen fighters sent to the border with Ukraine would cross over and “liberate the Ukrainians from the LGBT, satanist, and fascist regime.”
Further muddying the waters, a lieutenant colonel in the Russian military accused the notorious Wagner Group of feeding Delimkhanov’s coordinates to Ukrainian intelligence to “get revenge” on Kadyrov amid a simmering feud.
Lt. Col. Roman Venevitin, who presumably has his own bone to pick with Wagner after being captured by the group earlier this month, claimed on Telegram that Delimkhanov is in “critical condition” after the mercenary group sold him out.
Delimkhanov had also called out Wagner Founder Yevgeny Prigozhin earlier this month in a video posted on Telegram in which he mocked the mercenary boss as a “blogger” and demanded a face-to-face meeting to settle the growing feud.
