Ramzan Kadyrov offers to release Ukrainian prisoners of war in exchange for sanctions relief for his family

Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov offered to release Ukrainian prisoners of war in exchange for sanctions relief for members of his family, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

“We have prisoners of war who we captured in Donetsk, Luhansk. […] If they lift sanctions from my mother, my daughters, completely innocent people, horses […] then we’ll hand over these people,” TASS quotes Kadyrov as saying during U.S. writer Scott Ritter’s visit to the Chechen city of Grozny.

According to TASS, Kadyrov showed Ritter, a former U.N. weapons inspector and convicted sex offender, a video of the Ukrainian soldiers, in which they said that 20 military personnel would return home if sanctions were lifted from Kadyrov’s associates, planes, and horses.

Independent publication Agenstvo notes that Kadyrov’s proposal was condemned by some Russian “war correspondents” for attempting to act “above the state.”