"Just had to hold on": Ukraine: Dozens of Kadyrov soldiers eliminated

The Ukrainian General Staff reports successful artillery strikes in the Kherson region.

"Just had to hold on": Ukraine: Dozens of Kadyrov soldiers eliminated

The Ukrainian General Staff reports successful artillery strikes in the Kherson region. At least 30 Chechen soldiers are said to have been killed and others buried in an attack on a former school. Apparently their social media activities were fatal to them.

According to Ukrainian sources, more than 100 soldiers from the Russian republic of Chechnya were hit by artillery in the Russian-occupied Cherson region. "Precise artillery strikes by the defense forces killed 30 occupiers in the village of Kajiry in the Kherson region and left more than 100 enemy soldiers under the rubble," the Ukrainian general staff said in its evening situation report.

According to several consistent reports, soldiers belonging to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov were hit. The information could not be verified independently. The Ukrainian military governor of the Kherson region, Serhiy Khlan, explained that after the Chechen unit left the city of Kherson across the Dnipro River, they were stationed in a school in a village on the other bank of the river. The men themselves revealed their whereabouts through photos on social networks. "All our forces had to do was keep at it," Chlan said. He reported more than 40 dead and 60 buried.

The opposition Chechen Telegram channel 1Adat claimed that the headquarters of a Kadyrov regiment, housed in a school, was shot at and put the death toll at around 100. The notorious Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov did not comment on the incident itself, but did he vented his displeasure at the allegedly too soft action of Russia in Ukraine on Tuesday on social networks. For the shelling of Russian territory - to which Kadyrov counts Kherson after the annexation - Ukrainian cities would have to be razed to the ground, he demanded.

Kadyrov has been using social media since the first weeks of the war to stage himself and his fighters in the war. Its Chechen fighters are therefore sometimes derided as the "Tiktok army".