Ramzan Kadyrov was outraged by criticism of the bill to ban mentioning the nationality of criminals in the media and proposed to oblige journalists to indicate the nationalities of all those who commit crimes.

On November 11, the Chechen parliament decided to submit to the State Duma a draft of amendments to the fourth article of the federal law "On the Mass Media" ("Inadmissibility of Abusing Freedom of the Mass Media") and to the Code of Administrative Offenses. The deputies proposed to ban the publication of information regarding the nationality and religion of those who are involved in crimes in the media and on the internet. The proposed bill also mentioned bring administrative responsibility for violation of this prohibition. Speaker of the Chechen parliament, Magomed Daudov, explained the initiative by "the need to preserve interethnic and interfaith harmony and peace."

The Chechen parliament began preparing a bill after Ramzan Kadyrov commented on an incident in New Moscow where a group of young men beat up two men. “The secret services must find the provocateurs who mistakenly named the participants in the attack as natives of the North Caucasus,” Kadyrov said. State Duma deputy from Dagestan Sultan Khamzaev also proposed introducing a legislative ban on indicating in the media the nationality of suspects and convicts.

Ramzan Kadyrov addressed the critics of the bill. “Over the past few days, I have never heard or read a single intelligible, reasoned, balanced, and convincing commentary against this bill, which meets the principles of the national policy of the Russian Federation. Narrow public opinion from the general mass requests not to teach them to work. Do you want absolute freedom of speech? From tomorrow name everyone - Russian, Bashkir, Cossack, Tatar, Jew, Udmurt, Buryat, Yakut - all without exception! At the same time, we will find out who breaks the law the most," the head of Chechnya wrote in his Telegram channel.

He stressed that he was not trying to shield anyone, and the perpetrators should be punished according to the law. “Your ostentatious 'freedom of speech’ is spread only if Caucasians are involved in the case: Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis. I am in no way trying to shield anyone. If he is guilty, he must be punished according to the law! However, if everyone unanimously believes that it is necessary to name the nationality, let's honestly, without excuses or excuses, name every criminal," Kadyrov added.

According to him, most of the crimes are not committed by people from the Caucasus. “Okay, if you think that the nationality of the criminal should be indicated, I’m all for it! For example, in the first nine months of this year, more than 1.5 million crimes were committed in Russia, of which the absolute majority were not Caucasians,” Kadyrov stated.

The head of Chechnya also accused journalists and politicians of a biased and coordinated position on this issue. “Soloviev, Popov, Shevchenko, Drize, Merkacheva, Zatulin, Mironov, you should have paused at least to make your opinion look more natural. But each of you decided to please the general curator and speak out as quickly as possible. Tell your puppeteer that it was enough for him to muster up the courage to contact me directly and not to use dozens of media and newsmakers for this,” Kadyrov added, stressing that the people he listed “do not have their own opinion, a gram of foresight, patriotism, worries about everyone who lives in Russia and works honestly."

The fact that it is too early to assess the bill was announced by the presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov. "It is too early to assess. A document has been submitted, there is still work to be done in specialised committees and so on. So far this is not a topic on our agenda," Peskov said. When he was asked to evaluate the project at least at the conceptual level, he again refused: "No, we cannot give such evaluations."

When asked how President Vladimir Putin relates to the initiative and whether the nationality of the criminals is indicated in the digest for him, Mr. Peskov said: “The digest for the president indicates what appears in the media ... representatives of the media, what interpretations and nuances it all seems to be." The presidential spokesman added that at the moment there is no de jure prohibition on indicating the nationality of the offender.