Kremlin-installed Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov (R) attends a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, 7 August 2025. Photo: EPA / Alexander Nemenov / Pool
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday suggested the US could intimidate Vladimir Putin into ending the war in Ukraine by capturing the Kremlin-installed Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov in the same way it captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday.
In comments reported by news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, Zelensky said Washington should “put pressure on Russia” to end its invasion of Ukraine and that the US “has the tools” to do so by carrying out an operation on Russian soil.
“You have an example with Maduro. They carried out an operation. Everyone can see the result, the whole world. They did it quickly. Now let them carry out some kind of operation with that, what’s his name, with Kadyrov, with that murderer,” Zelensky said. “Maybe then Putin will see and think twice.”
While Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned the capture of key Kremlin ally Maduro and his wife during a US military operation in Caracas in the early hours of Saturday as an “act of armed aggression”, the operation was welcomed in Kyiv, with Zelensky quipping that “if this is how dictators can be dealt with, then the United States knows what to do next”, in an obvious reference to Putin.
In response to Zelensky’s suggestion that the US depose him, Kadyrov hit out at the Ukrainian president for “not threatening to do it himself, as a man would have done” and accused him of trying to disrupt peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the US.
“Now he’s asking the Americans for help, saying, ‘You didn’t help with weapons, but at least kidnap Ramzan’”, Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram channel.
“Zelya, at least try to be a man. If you can’t, it won’t work, but try. Save face and don't humiliate yourself,” Kadyrov continued, adding: “If you had a shred of masculinity in you, you would understand how humiliating your words and requests sound. And how clearly they confirm your attempts to derail the peace settlement”.
In 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Kadyrov had been ordered by Putin to seize government buildings in Kyiv and assassinate Zelensky in a plot foiled by Ukrainian intelligence — a claim dismissed by the Kremlin as “utter nonsense”.
In September, Ukraine’s SBU security service charged the Chechen leader in absentia with war crimes over his units’ treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
