The first time Putin achieved an impact on Russian public opinion was in September 1999 when, as Yeltsin’s prime minister, he started the war to subjugate the rebellious republic of Chechnya, flying from Moscow to Grozny to inspect the course of military operations himself. As Russia’s armed forces went on the rampage the mountainous republic was pulverized into submission. Grozny became a necropolis. The following year the fighting was yet to reach its end when Putin ascended to the presidency. The Chechen resistance was already doomed to defeat, but Putin understood that military victory by itself could not secure a political settlement. Yeltsin had had to deal with Chechen rulers who demanded to run the republic with the minimum of Russian interference, yet those same rulers had failed to dig out the roots of Islamist rebellion. Putin was not going to yield to what he saw as banditry, and looked for an efficient satrap, a hard man of the Chechen nation who would carry through a programme of pacification. He had learned from history that although Russians could secure Chechnya’s temporary submission, it would take a Chechen to govern the Chechens on a durable basis.
He found such an individual in Akhmat Kadyrov. Ostensibly an unlikely choice, in the 1990s Kadyrov had been one of the rebel leaders, and the Chief Mufti of Chechnya. But the Kadyrov family calculated that they could never finally beat the Russians, and in 2000 with Putin’s consent Akhmat mounted to the Chechen presidency with the obligation to keep the territory inside the Russian Federation and abide by the Kremlin’s policies. When Akhmat Kadyrov was assassinated by a terrorist bomb in 2004, his son Ramzan recommended himself to Putin as the safest choice for president. Putin agreed, waiting only for Ramzan’s thirtieth birthday in 2007 to allow him legally to take office.
The younger Kadyrov cultivates a frightening image. He has himself filmed cuddling wild animals, including a small tiger, which he keeps in the palatial residence he has had built at vast cost in his native village, Tsentaroi. A hundred people are employed to carry out the maintenance and housekeeping. No expense is spared to surround the Chechen president in an ostentatious embrace of luxury, and special quarters are said to be reserved for visits by Putin.1 In his daily routines Kadyrov is no idler, showing off his commitment to physical exercise and swaggering about in macho style. He shares with Putin a fanatical commitment to improving his physical fitness, promotes the virtues of Mixed Martial Arts, and is at his happiest in his private gym pumping iron. He combines luxury with faith, in 2015 arranging to have a blood transfusion from the UAE-based Sufi scholar Habib Ali al-Jifri, who was said to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammed.
Ramzan Kadyrov makes little distinction between his personal money and that which belongs to the people of Chechnya. His showiness is extraordinary. In 2005 he invited former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson to a boxing tournament at Gudermes, a town to the east of Grozny, paying him a fee of €2 million. Retired footballer Diego Maradona received €1 million for taking to the field in a match in which Kadyrov also played. In 2011 he enticed actress Hilary Swank to attend his thirty-fifth birthday party. She too was sumptuously rewarded.2
The adverse publicity that followed in the United States, however, persuaded Swank to offer to pass her fee to charity and express regret at not having acquainted herself in advance with Kadyrov’s oppressive policies. Global celebrities began to ignore the Chechen president’s blandishments, until in June 2018 he pounced on Mohamed ‘Mo’ Salah, the Liverpool and Egypt international footballer, while the Egypt team were based in the Chechen capital Grozny during the FIFA World Cup – Kadyrov had lobbied for Grozny to be used as a group stage centre, but had to content himself with the Egyptians using it as their training base. Kadyrov collected Salah from the team hotel to take him to the stadium,3 where the two were filmed in informal conversation walking beside the pitch. Salah, a fellow Sunni Muslim, was awarded Chechen honorary citizenship.
Chechnya under rule by the Kadyrovs presented a horrifying picture to the rest of the Russian Federation and the outside world. Its lawlessness was notorious, and visitors from abroad decreased. Even Russians thought twice about setting foot there. But Putin, ignoring Akhmat Kadyrov’s past Islamist militancy, still talked of his own role in bringing the territory back under the authority of the Russian Federation. The prospect of peace was for him the important thing, and he proclaimed that solid decent foundations were already being laid for economic regeneration, though he admitted the ‘shadow economy’ still bulked large in Chechnya. The Chechen transport infrastructure and labour resources, he claimed, had become the best in the Russian Federation. Putin remained unquenchably optimistic about the achievements of Russia’s hitherto untameable mountain republic.4
Under Ramzan’s rule the ruins of Grozny and other Chechen cities were replaced by splendid new buildings in the modern style. The capital acquired skyscrapers as well as a multipurpose sport venue, the Akhmat-Arena, named in memory of Kadyrov’s assassinated father. One of the main thoroughfares in the rebuilt city centre was named Putin Prospekt. A ski resort was constructed in Veduchi, in the mountains fifty miles directly south of Grozny, after Kadyrov enlisted the Chechen billionaire Ruslan Baisarov’s skills in finance and construction.5 A new thermal power plant neared completion in Grozny’s Zavodskoi district after a contract was signed with Siemens for the supply of gigantic gas turbines. Highways were repaired and modernized. In 2008 the Heart of Chechnya Mosque, informally named after Akhmat Kadyrov and one of Europe’s biggest, was finished in a neo-Ottoman style. Nearby is the Russian Islamic University, offering courses that avoid the even more conservative religious teachings common in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere. Kadyrov’s latest grandiose scheme is to find finance for the tallest skyscraper on the European continent, inevitably to be called the Akhmat Tower. So far only the foundations have been excavated.
The funds for most projects came from a republican budget supplied by the Finance Ministry in Moscow. Year after year, Chechnya received massive subsidies that from 2007 to 2015 amounted to an average annual transfer of 60 billion rubles (or $1–2 billion as the exchange rate varied).6 The state-owned Vneshekonombank advanced huge loans for further development, in line with Putin’s determination to maintain buoyancy in the Chechen economy. Kadyrov also levies money on a monthly basis from the citizens of Chechnya to support the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation – even Chechen businessmen operating elsewhere in the Russian Federation are compelled to contribute.7 Much of the money Chechnya receives is siphoned off by Kadyrov to pay for his extravagant lifestyle, and no serious attempt is made in Moscow to put a stop to his corruption. When Sergei Stepashin was asked as Russia’s Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation to comment on the flagrant financial abuses, he shrugged: ‘Kadyrov owns the entire republic, so don’t worry about him.’8 Evidently the authorities in Moscow know that Putin wants Kadyrov to remain untouched – and Kadyrov’s reputation for vengeful violence discourages opposition.
At a time of financial trouble Russia’s Finance Minister Siluanov contended that Chechnya’s budgetary privileges should not remain immune, and with Putin’s support, he held meetings with Kadyrov to smooth the process. Kadyrov objected that ‘the republic won’t be able to develop’ if the government were to decrease its subventions; the high birth rate among Chechen families, he argued, entitled it to its usual generous outlay. But Siluanov held firm, and in September 2017 pushed Kadyrov into accepting a compromise.9
Putin receives Kadyrov at least twice a year, occasions of staged deference in which the Chechen president performs the role of loyal executor of Putin’s instructions. In March 2016, he told Kadyrov:
I know that Chechnya has been transformed in recent years, and we can see this with our own eyes. This is a self-evident fact. And Chechnya hasn’t just been transformed superficially. Where once there were ruins and destroyed towns and villages, now – without any exaggeration – there are flourishing places of habitation where people live in comfort and convenience. The number of beautiful new buildings is on the increase, of which Chechnya and the entire Caucasus can be proud but which are also to a certain extent a source of pride for Russia.10
In April 2017, again protesting his republic’s total compliance with Russian policy, Kadyrov boasted that he had taken his positive message about Russia on his tour of Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where, as a Muslim talking to Muslims, he was able to make a persuasive case about the virtue of the Christian Putin.11
When Putin talks of Chechnya, he acknowledges the wrongs done to the Chechen people in the 1940s, but adds an undercurrent of Russian nationalism:
One can endlessly speculate about the Chechen people’s tragedy in the period of their deportation from Chechnya by the Stalinist regime. But were the Chechens the only victims of those repressions? Well, the first and greatest victim of those repressions was the Russian people, who suffered the most from the process. This is our common history.12
When Saudi Arabia’s King Salman visited Moscow in October 2017, Putin invited Kadyrov to join in the formal ceremonies, tantamount to accepting him as a trusted member of the Kremlin inner core. Kadyrov returns the favour by treating Putin in public with an admiration bordering on worship. On coming to power in Chechnya, he told a reporter:
I respect Putin not only as president but also as a person. I’m not a man of the FSB or GRU, I’m Putin’s man. His policies and his word are law for me. We are travelling his road. Putin saved our people; he’s a hero. He not only saved us but also he saved Russia. Why not bow down before him as before a person? I’ve never liked to express beautiful words in front of anyone, but Putin is a gift from God. He gave us freedom.13
In the same interview he called for Putin to be made Russia’s president for life.
Putin is not Kadyrov’s solitary supporter in Moscow. When Vladislav Surkov, himself half-Chechen by birth, worked in the Presidential Administration,14 he too promoted the idea of Kadyrov’s usefulness to Moscow. The pugnacious Viktor Zolotov, Putin’s bodyguard chief till 2013 and head of the National Guard from its creation in 2016, is another supporter: Kadyrov and Zolotov have posted pictures of themselves together on Facebook, and it is suggested that Zolotov speaks up for the Chechen president in Kremlin discussions.15 But not everyone in the ruling group shares this attitude: the Chechen president’s interference in affairs beyond the borders of Chechen territory is resented, and his lawlessness is regarded as a menace not only to the Opposition but also potentially to those who wield power in Moscow. Sechin in particular has not been afraid to challenge Kadyrov, and hilariously this led to them being compelled to show they could settle their differences over Rosneft’s investments in Chechnya by posing for a publicized embrace. Crocodile hugged crocodile.16
But Kadyrov holds on to the advantage of Putin’s protection. A flamboyant user of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter who loves to post pictures of his antics, whether playing football or sitting at home with his zoo animals, Kadyrov was banned by several US social media companies at Christmas 2017 after being named as a target of American economic sanctions. Facebook and Instagram withdrew his access whereas Twitter cited the American constitution’s commitment to free speech and declined to ban him. Roskomnadzor, the Russian institution responsible for supervising the internet in Russia, took up his cause, but predictably had no success in changing the decisions, and Kadyrov had to turn to Russian social media outlets. Disappointing as it was to lose his global following, he continued to bombard his supporters in Russia with his personal boasts.
Kadyrov performs the invaluable service to Putin of holding Chechnya as part of the Russian Federation. He does this in a peculiarly autocratic fashion by clearing out all political opposition. For years United Russia has been Chechnya’s only political party. ‘I have said that the word “Opposition” should be forgotten [in Chechnya],’ he brags. His reasoning is that of a contented autocrat: ‘We have no Opposition, which serves only to undermine authority. I will not allow [political opponents] to play with the people.’ Independent monitoring of elections has become too dangerous for its sponsoring organizations, so Kadyrov and United Russia are assured of victory unobserved by potential critics. Putin can be equally confident: courtesy of Kadyrov, at the 2012 presidential elections he received 99.73 per cent of the vote in Chechnya.17
As well as being Chechnya’s president, Kadyrov acts as a religious preceptor, in 2010 declaring, ‘Sharia law is above Russian laws.’18 Muslim customs – or rather those of which Kadyrov approves – are imposed on citizens regardless of their religious affiliation. Modest dress is demanded, and women are ordered to wear headscarves in public places, with the police arresting any who appear in public with their hair uncovered. But while promoting Islam, Kadyrov is fiercely opposed to symptoms of jihadi radicalism. There is a ban on the full Islamic robes that are worn compulsorily in Saudi Arabia, and Salafists are strongly discouraged. Females who veil their faces in public are liable to arrest and several days of re-education.19 ‘I tell you that a woman who goes out in black clothes, with a covered chin,’ Kadyrov has said, ‘her husband should know that we will take this woman away and look her over . . . we will force her to take off her clothes and trousers.’ In Kadyrov’s mind such apparel is associated with extremism, which he is committed to eliminating. His security men and clerics stop buses and cars to carry out checks, hauling off the offending female passengers and subjecting them to ‘guided discussions’ without informing families of their whereabouts.20
Kadyrov bulldozes the houses of families of active jihadis, and in April 2017 decreed that relatives were to have their pensions withdrawn to prevent financial support for terrorist groups: a doctrine of collective responsibility. Such sanctions were applied both inside and outside Chechnya: if Chechens went outside the republic to organize outrages, including Islamic State in Syria, the family members they left behind should expect to pay a price.21
In August 2016 his zeal to impose his own version of Islam got him into trouble when he organized an international Islamic conference in Grozny. Though Kadyrov did not participate in person, it was he who supplied the guiding influence and financial and organizational underpinning. Chechen clerics issued a fatwa that obediently repeated their intolerance of violent jihadism, condemning not only Islamic State in Iraq and Syria but also the Salafist teachings that enjoy official approval in Saudi Arabia. As a result, Muslim leaders from other parts of the Russian Federation, including the Mufti, Ravil Gainutdin, stayed away. The Saudi clergy were infuriated both by the attack on their doctrines and the open attempt to sow internal dissent in global Islam.22 There were rumours, which Kadyrov’s spokespersons denied, that he subsequently flew to Riyadh to make his peace with the Saudis and even apologize. The conference was not his most effective intervention in religious affairs beyond Chechnya’s borders.
The moral regime under Kadyrov is defiantly extreme too. Polygamy is practised in Chechnya without interference by state authorities: ‘Those who consider us barbarians for this reason,’ contends Kadyrov, ‘are clearly barbarians themselves, since this is a normal, pure and proper attitude toward women.’23 He is vehemently hostile to homosexuality. Gays have suffered persecution in Chechnya, and in 2017 there were well-attested reports of a ‘prophylactic sweep’ of abduction and torture. Men returned barely alive after their brutal experience; some were murdered outright.24 Kadyrov responded to repeated charges about such atrocities by simply denying their veracity, on the grounds that no gay lived on Chechen territory. Inquiries about human rights abuses are brutally discouraged. The Memorial organization, which publicizes breaches of the law in past and present, has acute difficulty operating in Chechnya. In 2009 the human rights activist and investigative reporter Natalya Estemirova was murdered after exposing the series of abductions carried out by members of Kadyrov’s militia. In 2018 Memorial’s local director, Oyub Titiev, was arrested on charges of drug dealing that were patently trumped up. A storm of protest brewed among Russian liberals.
But Kadyrov’s posture of adoration has recently slackened. In summer 2017 he took a stand against the shocking maltreatment of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. As fellow Muslims, the Rohingyas attracted his sympathy when their houses were burned down and women were raped. Kadyrov criticized Russian foreign policy for its limp response. At a rally attended by around a million people, he endorsed the idea of sending volunteers to confront the Myanmar armed forces. If he had nuclear weapons, he said, he would consider using them.25
Kadyrov had got used to appealing to Chechen sentiment. In August 2018 a certain Yusup Temirkhanov died in a penal colony in Omsk. Temirkhanov was serving a sentence for murdering Colonel Yuri Budanov, who in 2000 had abducted and murdered an eighteen-year-old Chechen girl. Like many Chechens, Kadyrov regarded Temirkhanov as a national hero who had carried out an honour killing. He attended the funeral and gave an impassioned oration in the prisoner’s memory,26 according to reports exclaiming that the affair was ‘an insult to all of us’ and demanding, ‘If we are Russian citizens, then treat us like Russian citizens.’27
The terrorism that Kadyrov says he has expunged from Chechnya did not really disappear. Hundreds of Chechen volunteers joined the Islamist militant jihadis who travelled to Turkey in transit to the jihadi organizations of the Middle East. Kadyrov even admitted as much. But he was less forthcoming about terrorists who stayed in the republic and killed members of his security forces and planted bombs in public spaces in 2014 and 2015.28 In August 2018 there were three separate attacks on Chechen police, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility. Kadyrov countered that Chechnya’s youth had been inoculated against Islamist radicalism, but he failed to explain the rationale for the violence. Probably his own rough treatment of fellow religionists who want independence for the Chechen land and a more conservative form of Islam has had the effect of radicalizing youthful rebels. Keeping the lid on has a very high cost.
Kadyrov also remains a lurking threat to order in the rest of the Russian Federation. His tentacles have always stretched out beyond Chechnya’s borders, and if he fell out definitively with the Kremlin his links with criminal groups would enable him to cause general mayhem. It is not wholly impossible, indeed, that Kadyrov might seek to put himself at the head of a secessionist movement in his republic; his revered father, of course, was originally an independence fighter, and he has friends abroad, especially in the United Arab Emirates. With thousands of men under arms Ramzan Kadyrov could decide to rise against Russia’s military might. Of course, he is aware that the Russians know where he keeps his arms and his money, and that he lacks war planes and long-distance missiles. If the order is given, the Russians could swiftly reduce his palatial home to rubble, and it is doubtful Kadyrov himself would survive for long. He would not win, but that doesn’t mean he is prudent enough to restrain himself: he has an autocrat’s temperament and is used to doing what he likes in Chechnya.
How long Chechnya can endure his murderous regime is another question. Behind the facade of reconstruction in Chechnya lies a grim reminder of the recent wars across its territories. On Grozny’s outskirts the shanty settlements persist, and in village after village there is no sign that Moscow’s money has trickled down to the poor. Many of the fine office buildings in the Chechen capital have unoccupied floors. The unemployment rate in Chechnya, with one in seven being out of work, is second only in the Russian Federation to poverty-stricken Ingushetia. Admittedly there are many Chechens who work outside the law and pay no taxes: official statistics have to be taken with a pinch of salt, not only in Chechnya but also throughout Russia. What is hard to deny is that there are plenty of alienated young hotheads whom the jihadi recruiters are able to discover and recruit. What keeps Kadyrov in power are not just his violent practices but Putin’s awareness that he relies on the Chechen leader to prevent a reversion to the rebellions of the 1990s. As long as Putin supplies Kadyrov with the freedom and bounty he requires, Kadyrov’s loyalty appears dependable.
The republic has often been advertised as a gemstone set in the crown of Russia’s economic recovery. In reality Chechnya is an extreme example of the Putin administration’s many failures in regional policy. Kadyrov and his armed Kadyrovtsy have terrorized their own nation in a way that would have produced revolt if Russia’s armed forces had used the same methods. The North Caucasus, brutally pacified by Alexander II’s Imperial Army in the 1860s, is still recent history in the minds of many of its inhabitants. Within living memory, moreover, the entire Chechen people was deported to the wastes of Kazakhstan in the Second World War. Time will tell whether the Russians are wise to hang on to Chechnya and the other territories on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, rather than let them go as they did in 1991 with the Soviet republics of the USSR.