Ramzan Kadyrov posts video clip from meeting with prisoner who was beaten by the Chechen leader’s son

Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video to his Telegram channel which appears to show a clip from his meeting with Nikita Zhuravel, a 19-year-old man from Volgograd who was accused of burning the Quran.

The 16-second clip shows Zhuravel saying: “To study Islam itself, at least to try.” This was followed by:

Kadyrov: Do you convert to Islam?

Zhuravel: Yes, yes, yes.

Kadyrov: You’re not saying it from the heart. Your eyes are looking somewhere else.

In the post, Kadyrov calls Zhuravel “an agent of the Ukrainian Secret Service.” Kadyrov said he believes Zhuravel was “trained for these kinds of conversations and repeated a phrase he memorized in advance about gradually getting closer to converting to Islam.” The Chechen leader goes on to say that Zhuravel burned the Quran “not out of ignorance or lack of knowledge, but deliberately, wishing to insult Muslims and to pit religions denominations against each other in Russia.”