Ukraine war: Kyiv aid 'money laundering scheme', Christmas truce fails, Ukrainians honour war dead
Western aid to Ukraine is a "scheme for laundering money", the leader of Russia's Chechen Republic said on Sunday.
"I see that some are worried about the foreign aid to Ukraine. Do not worry! This is a working money laundering scheme. Western and Ukrainian officials will embezzle these funds, and no more than 15% of the entire aid will reach the trenches," Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.
There is no evidence for this claim from the staunch Putin ally.
Military and financial aid from the west has been hugely instrumental in helping Ukraine turn the tide on the battlefield, as well as keeping its state afloat. There have been no documented cases of it going missing.
Kadyrov claimed there was no need to worry about hostilities on Russian territory, with Ukrainian drones hitting targets inside Russia in recent days.
"These are our regions, which opted to join our state for the sake of protection of their people from Satanist actions of Ukrainian and NATO nationalists," he was quoted as saying by TASS, a Russian state news agency.
On Friday, the US announced a new 2.85 billion dollar package of military aid for Ukraine, which will include tank-killing armoured vehicles.
The assistance was praised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "exactly" what Ukraine needed.
In a separate message, Kadyrov wrote on Telegram that some 300 fighters from Chechen had been deployed to Ukraine.
He claimed that since the start of the fighting in February, fighters from Chechnya in southern Russia have displayed high combat capabilities and efficiency, according to TASS.
A Russian rocket strike on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk caused damage but did not destroy buildings and there were no obvious signs of casualties, Reuters reported
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