Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov has said that a drone strike on a military academy in Chechnya had killed Ukrainian prisoners of war. 

The announcement followed Tuesday’s attack in Gudermes, reportedly the first time Chechnya had been struck since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine. 

In a post on Telegram, Kadyrov said at least ten Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) were kept at every ‘strategic facility’ in Chechnya, including at the Gudermes academy, colloquially known as the Russian University of Special Forces.

‘Kyiv, trying to harm us, killed its own soldiers today’, Kadyrov claimed, without providing any evidence to support his assertion. He also reiterated Tuesday’s statements, in which he acknowledged the academy had been damaged, but that there were no casualties among Chechen forces. 

‘From now on, Ukraine must understand that such attacks only harm its own citizens’, Kadyrov continued, adding that he had ordered forces under his command to no longer take prisoners in Ukraine as a result of the attack. 

The claims could not be independently verified. 

At the same time, a Ukrainian intelligence source told the Kyiv Independent the drone attack may have been connected to an ongoing dispute related to a deadly  shootout in September at the Moscow office of Russia’s biggest online retail company, Wildberries.

Kadyrov has been embroiled in the convoluted feud, which involves other Russian lawmakers and businessmen from the North Caucasus. 

Earlier in October, Kadyrov accused three Russian MPs of trying to assassinate him, and threatened to declare a ‘blood feud’ against them unless they proved their innocence. 

The intelligence source told the Kyiv Independent that the drone may have been launched from neighbouring Ingushetia or Daghestan, where the lawmakers Kadyrov is in conflict with are from, and not from Ukraine. 

If true, the claims would mark a significant escalation from the origins of the Wildberries incident, which began as a business dispute between the estranged and formerly married co-founders of the company.