Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he would “rather die 100 times” than disappoint Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to an interview published in Nasha Versia on Wednesday.

“I’m the real representative of the Kremlin. I am completely Vladimir Putin’s man,” Kadyrov told the Moscow weekly. “I’d rather die 100 times than let him down.”

Kadyrov, who is fighting an Islamic insurgency that grew out of the 1990s Chechen separatist movement, blamed “the same foreign powers that destroyed the Soviet Union” for continuing violence. Those same enemies are responsible for “alcoholism, drug abuse and prostitution” in Siberia, Kadyrov said.

(Bloomberg)