Putin’s spokesman pours cold water on Chechnya’s plans to arm US partisans

Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has stated that Russian law prohibits any state entities but the federal government from selling or buying arms abroad. Peskov’s remarks are the Kremlin’s response to a recent announcement by Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov, the speaker of the Chechen parliament, who promised to begin delivering Russian weapons to Mexico if the United States sends lethal aid to Ukraine.

“I don’t know what this announcement was about, but such actions would violate Russian law,” Peskov said.

Dukuvakha Abdurakhmanov threatened to send weapons to Mexico after the US House of Representatives approved a resolution calling on President Barack Obama to ship lethal aid to the Ukrainian government.

“[If the US] supplies weapons to Ukraine, we’ll view it as adequate reason to begin delivering the latest weapons to Mexico to resume the debate about the legal status of the territories the US annexed from Mexico [in the 19th century]: present-day California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and parts of Wyoming. We reserve the right to hold conferences in Russia, Mexico, and the US about splitting off these states from the Union and arming partisans in these areas,” Abdurakhmanov said.

See also Meduza's interview with Abdurakhmanov from December 2014: ‘They should all be eliminated on the spot’