Putin inspects troops readying to fight Ukraine in surprise trip to Chechnya

(Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov on Tuesday inspected Chechen troops and volunteers readying to fight Ukraine, the Kremlin said, in what was Putin's first trip in 13 years to the North Caucasus republic.

The previously unannounced trip to the mostly Muslim republic that is part of Russia comes as Moscow fights to push Ukrainian forces out of its Kursk region two weeks after they smashed through the border in the largest invasion of Russia since World War Two.

"As long as we have men like you, we are absolutely, absolutely invincible," Putin told troops at the Russian Special Forces University, a training school in Chechnya's Gudermes, according to a transcript on the Kremlin's website.

"It is one thing to shoot at a shooting range here, and another thing to put your life and health at risk. But you have an inner need to defend the Fatherland and the courage to make such a decision."

The foreign occupation of Russian land has been an embarrassment for Putin and his army, even as Russian forces continue their gradual but steady advances on the frontline in eastern Ukraine.

Kadyrov, sanctioned by the United States in 2020 and in 2022 for alleged human rights abuses and mobilising Chechen troops to fight Ukraine, told Putin at a separate meeting on Tuesday that Chechnya had sent more than 47,000 troops since the start of the war to fight Ukraine, including about 19,000 volunteers.

Kadyrov has often described himself as Putin's "foot soldier."

When asked by a journalist whether "Putin's foot soldiers" like Kadyrov justify his trust, Putin said "If I had more of these foot soldiers, I would be very happy, but even one such foot soldier is worth a lot", reported the RIA agency.

BESLAN AND KURSK

Before heading to Chechnya, Putin visited for the first time in at least 16 years the town Beslan in North Ossetia. The 2004 school siege by Islamic militants there left more than 330 dead in what has been the bloodiest incident of its kind in modern Russian history.

Among those killed were 136 children, Putin said at a meeting in Beslan with the mothers of the children killed in the attack.

"This tragedy will remain an unhealed wound in the historical memory of all of Russia," Putin said, according to the transcript published on the Kremlin's website.

But he also added that Russia continues to face enemies that try to destabilise the country.

"And just as we fought terrorists, today we have to fight those who commit crimes in the Kursk region, in Donbas," Putin said, referring to Ukraine's surprise incursion into the Russian territory and the broader Donbas region in Ukraine's southeast, which Russian forces partially control.

"We will punish the criminals. There can be no doubt about this."

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Stephen Coates and Michael Perry)