Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s upstart president, offers Vladimir Putin a
master class in the art of passive aggression.
In a move
that has sent shockwaves through the international media, the president of #Chechnya, #Ramzan_Kadyrov, announced on
Saturday that he intends to step down after his current term expires on April
5. Having ruled the turbulent Russian republic with an iron fist since 2007,
Kadyrov said in an interview with a pro-Kremlin TV station that he had now
accomplished his mission, and that the time had come for him to devote himself
to his family and to Islamic studies.
Few
in Russia expect him to follow through, and most pundits regard his declaration
as yet another move in the increasingly high-stakes game of chicken he has been
playing, for years, with the Kremlin. The end goal of Kadyrov’s strategy is not
just to secure further remittances from Moscow but to reinforce the legitimacy
of his rule by having Russian President Vladimir Putin personally announce that
he wants him to remain in power.
As
part of his gambit, the outspoken Chechen leader has amped up his incendiary
rhetoric in recent months, drawing Moscow’s attention to his ability to both
divide opinion and command significant public support. On January 12, he took
to the website of the Chechen government to label the
unofficial Russian opposition as “enemies of the people” and suggested they be
tried to the “fullest extent for their subversive activities.” This
brought an inevitable outcry from
opposition leaders — which, in turn, prompted a mass demonstration in support
of Kadyrov in Grozny, the Chechen capital.
A few weeks later
he posted a video that showed former Russian prime minister and current opposition
leader Mikhail Kasyanov meeting in Strasbourg with representatives of the
Council of Europe to discuss the investigation into the high-profile murder of
another well-known activist, Boris Nemtsov. The hidden-camera footage was
digitally altered to look like it was taken through the crosshairs of a sniper
rifle, and accompanied by a barely veiled threat:
“Whoever doesn’t understand will understand.” Considering
that the murder of Nemtsov has widely been linked to Kadyrov’s inner circle and
has caused Putin considerable trouble, the move was clearly aimed at goading a
reaction from Moscow.
The Kremlin at
first remained unmoved by Kadyrov’s bravado — that is, until he disclosed on Russian
television that Chechen special forces were fighting undercover against the
Islamic State in Syria. If true, this would go against the many public
declarations Putin has made, both to the Russian people and his foreign allies,
that Russia would never engage in ground combat in Syria. Noticeably rattled,
the Russian government was forced to issue a stern rebuttal, emphasizing that
that the Ministry of Defense was the only source for official information on
the matter.
Such behavior from
any other Russian politician would border on suicide, but these tactics are
nothing new for the Chechen tsar, who has consistently used the political
capital he has amassed since assuming office to bargain for dividends from the
Kremlin.
Kadyrov first came
to prominence in 2004 after the assassination of his father, Akhmad Kadyrov,
the then-leader of the Chechen Republic. Kadyrov senior had been a separatist
militia commander in the first Chechen war for independence (1994-1996), before
switching sides during the second campaign in 1999 and striking a deal with a
rising political star, Vladimir Putin, who had just become prime minister.
Putin enlisted Kadyrov senior’s help in cracking down on separatist forces in
the region, and in return appointed him president of Chechnya in 2003.
After
the elder Kadyrov was assassinated by a bomb,
27-year old Ramzan was summoned to Moscow to receive Putin’s official
condolences and to symbolically assume the reins of power. Their somber meeting
in the Kremlin proved a memorable one, not least because Kadyrov broke official
protocol by wearing a sky-blue track suit,
characteristically setting the tone for the relationship in which the younger
man would constantly test the limits of what was allowed.
He has since
earned an extremely privileged position with Putin, largely due to his ruthless
approach to wiping out the region’s separatist insurgency. In this he relied
primarily on the assistance of his unofficial (formerly insurgent) militia, the kadyrovtsy,
gradually edging federal troops out of his territory in the process. International
and domestic human rights groups have decried the mass kidnappings, raids, and
torture that have accompanied Kadyrov’s policies, but the Kremlin is overjoyed
at his effectiveness in bringing quiet to the troublesome region.
In addition,
Kadyrov consistently provided Putin and his party, United Russia, with a high
turnout of supportive votes in general elections. In return, the Kremlin has
flooded the region with money, including over 14 billion dollars in postwar
reconstruction funds. In 2011 one of Russia’s leading economists, Natalia
Zubarevich, referred to Chechnya
as a “bottomless pit for federal subsidies.” Indeed, 83 percent of its 2015
budget is estimated to have come from federal funds.
Even so, the more
Moscow depends on Kadyrov to control the region, the more it becomes a hostage
to his growing ambition. Having consolidated power in Chechnya, Kadyrov
informally turned the republic into an Islamic state within secular Russia. His
government prescribes the observance of sharia law for all citizens, requires
women to wear headscarves, and permits honor killings as part of traditional
practice. He has also built a thirty-thousand-strong army, feared by many in
Russia, that is loyal to him rather than to the Kremlin.
The late
investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose 2006 murder is widely
attributed to Kadyrov, once described him as a “little dragon” raised by the
Kremlin. “Now they need to feed it,” she wrote, “otherwise it will spit
fire.”
And the Chechen
leader is certainly known for using open provocation to secure continued
payoffs from Moscow. In 2014, when the Russian economy was hit by falling oil
prices, rumors started swirling that the federal budget allocation for the
region would be cut for the first time. Kadyrov started making announcements
about preparing to send 70,000 volunteers to fight in Ukraine, at a time when
Russia insisted that the Ukrainian war was a civil conflict without any Russian
intervention. In the end,
Chechnya was one of the few
regions to receive a bump in its federal funding that year.
In recent months,
Kadyrov’s strategy has won him ownership of Chechenneftekhimprom, a subsidiary of
the state-owned oil company Rosneft that controls the region’s refining
infrastructure, which he has sought for many years. But the leader appears to
want still more, and his current round of inflammatory statements is said to stem from
his effort to secure the construction of an oil refinery in Chechnya, as
well as a guarantee that federal budget cuts, imposed as Russia’s economy reels
from low oil prices and Western sanctions, will not affect federal support for
his republic.
More than
anything, however, Kadyrov appears to be maneuvering for reinstatement into the
presidency by a direct request from Putin. This is why the Chechen leader
announced his intention to step down last week, knowing all too well that
Chechens would immediately vow to pour onto the streets
of Grozny to beseech him to stay. Some of the most prominent cultural figures
in the country have already joined an online plea for him to change his mind
with the viral hashtag #Рамзаннеуходи (#RamzanDon’tGo). For the moment,
however, he has told his fans to hold back, apparently in the expectation of an
imminent Kremlin announcement in support of his continued rule.
And Putin is
likely to give in, largely due to his awareness of the authority and respect
Kadyrov commands in Chechnya and the rest of the largely Sunni North Caucasus.
At a time when Russia is fighting a war as part of a Shia coalition alongside
the official Syrian government, Iran, and Iraq, Putin is acutely aware of the
delicate balance of public opinion of his Muslim Russian citizens. Over 2,400
Russians are said to have already joined the ranks of the Islamic State, and
Putin is known to dread the prospect of another Islamist uprising inside Russia.
But there is
another reason for Putin’s continued appeasement of Kadyrov. The Russian
president simply cannot afford to acknowledge the extent to which his Chechen
proxy has become unhinged, as this would mean that Putin’s own policy in the
region has failed. Putin rose to power on a promise to bring the rebellious
Chechens back into the Russian fold after the chaos of the 1990s, and his
current strongman image is closely linked with his subsequent victory in the
second Chechen war.
For Putin, admitting that he
has lost control over Kadyrov would be tantamount to political suicide.
Putin’s press
secretary Dmitry Peskov has responded to Kadyrov’s
announcement, saying that the Kremlin has “yet to decide” on the fate of the
head of Chechnya. In reality, however, Putin is trapped. There is no viable
alternative to the prince in the tracksuit.
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