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NY Times, Mar. 19 2015
Chechen’s Ties to Putin Are Questioned Amid Nemtsov Murder Case
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
GROZNY, Russia — Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Chechnya,
has been at the center of intrigue surrounding the murder of Boris Y.
Nemtsov, a prominent critic of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
So before a busy weekend that included a night out with the boys to
watch cage fighting, Mr. Kadyrov wanted to clear something up: “I am
utterly devoted to Vladimir Putin and ready until the end of my life to
resist the enemies of Russia,” he wrote on Instagram.
The question these days is not so much Mr. Kadyrov’s fealty to Mr.
Putin, his political patron, but whether Mr. Putin’s Faustian bargain to
gain stability in Chechnya, where Russia fought two grisly wars to
suppress Muslim separatists, has backfired, unleashing a violent and
unpredictable despot.
Critics of Mr. Putin have warned that he has allowed Mr. Kadyrov, 38, to
effectively create the Islamic republic that Chechen separatists had
dreamed of — albeit one entirely reliant on Moscow for financial support
and where Shariah law is selective, not absolute. And, they say, Mr.
Kadyrov may now be seeking power and relevance far beyond his base in
the jagged hills of the North Caucasus.
Unlike in other regions, where local security forces are subordinate to
federal authorities, Mr. Kadyrov controls his own internal security
troops, known as Kadyrovtsy. He is known for ruthlessly eliminating
critics at home and abroad. And in Moscow, he is widely resented by the
security services for being allowed to operate with impunity.
“The F.S.B. hate Ramzan because they are unable to control him,” Alexey
Malashenko, an expert on the Caucasus at the Carnegie Moscow Center,
said of the successor intelligence agency to the K.G.B. “He does
whatever he wants, including in Moscow. Nobody can arrest members of his
team if there is no agreement with Putin.”
Mr. Nemtsov had recently called attention to the dangers inherent in
such a security arrangement. “I cannot understand what Putin expects
when arming 20,000 Kadyrovtsy gathered today in the stadium in Grozny,”
Mr. Nemtsov wrote in a Facebook post in December, after Mr. Kadyrov led
his troops in chants of “God is great!” at a rally in the Chechen
capital’s new soccer arena.
“What will happen next?” Mr. Nemtsov wrote. “The country is entering a
crisis. There is not enough money for anything, including the support of
regions. And the unspoken contract between Putin and Kadyrov — money in
exchange for loyalty — ends. And where will 20,000 Kadyrovtsy go? What
will they demand? How will they behave? When will they come to Moscow?”
While the authorities have produced no evidence that Mr. Kadyrov or
anyone close to him ordered the Nemtsov killing, investigators have
arrested five Chechen suspects, including a former deputy commander of
one of Mr. Kadyrov’s security battalions. Even allies of Mr. Nemtsov who
believe the Kremlin is behind his death say the investigation so far has
exposed a dangerous rift between chiefs of the security services in
Moscow and the brash Chechen leader.
The rift is of Mr. Putin’s making. For eight years, he has sanctioned
Mr. Kadyrov’s iron-fisted rule while seemingly turning a blind eye to
assassinations, torture and other human rights abuses. At the same time,
the Kremlin bankrolled an expensive rebuilding effort that has
transformed Grozny into a glittering Caucasian oasis, and allowed Mr.
Kadyrov to amass his heavily armed personal militia.
The result, admirers and detractors agree, is an over-the-top political
persona the likes of which Russia has never seen: Islamist warlord;
Russian nationalist; and fierce Putin loyalist — at least for now.
Long tied to the killings of his personal rivals and critics, Mr.
Kadyrov has emerged in recent months as one of the strongest backers of
Mr. Putin’s policies in Ukraine, allowing fighters and weapons to flow
from Chechnya to support the pro-Russian separatists. He was a leader of
a huge “anti-Maidan” rally in Moscow to protest Ukraine’s shift toward
Europe, and in January he led a mass demonstration in Grozny after the
shootings at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French
newspaper, denouncing the publication as anti-Muslim.
Posters proclaiming “We Love the Prophet Muhammad” now hang on buildings
throughout the city.
On Saturday evening, Mr. Kadyrov was in his element, lounging on a plush
high-backed sofa in the V.I.P. section of Grozny’s main sports arena,
watching mixed martial arts fighters bloody one another in a metal cage.
Wearing a red baseball cap and a jersey from the local Akhmat Fight
Club, Mr. Kadyrov sat next to Aleksandr S. Zaldostanov, nicknamed the
Surgeon, who is the leader of the Night Wolves, a pro-Putin biker gang
in Russia. At times flashing thumbs up, and at other times thrusting his
arm in the air triumphantly, Mr. Kadyrov yelled encouragement to the
young local athletes battling international challengers.
“Hold him!” Mr. Kadyrov screamed in Chechen. “Be more confident!” “Go
forward!” “Attack!”
Mr. Kadyrov does not go in much for mercy. He has been linked to some of
Russia’s most jarring, politically charged killings, including that of a
prominent investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, in 2006 and of a
human rights advocate, Natalya Estemirova, whose colleagues said Mr.
Kadyrov personally threatened her months before she was abducted outside
her Grozny apartment in 2009.
Two of Mr. Kadyrov’s bitter rivals in Chechnya’s notorious tribal
politics were eliminated in public killings. Ruslan B. Yamadayev was
shot to death while sitting in a car in central Moscow in 2008, while
his brother, Sulim B. Yamadayev, was killed in Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, in 2009. The Dubai authorities issued an arrest warrant for
Adam Delimkhanov, a close adviser to Mr. Kadyrov.
A former bodyguard of Mr. Kadyrov, Umar Israilov, who had documented
gruesome torture and other human rights abuses by Mr. Kadyrov and his
associates, was killed in 2009 in Vienna, where he had fled with his family.
Mr. Kadyrov has generally waved off past accusations, and he was
similarly dismissive when asked about Mr. Nemtsov, a pro-democracy
crusader and dogged critic of Mr. Putin, who was assassinated just
outside the Kremlin walls.
“What? Am I an investigator?” Mr. Kadyrov snapped to a reporter as he
strode out of the Grozny Coliseum at 1:30 a.m. into a brisk night,
surrounded by his phalanx of heavily armed guards.
“Heh!” he said, exaggerating a laugh. “This is a question for the
Investigative Committee, for the prosecutor’s office, for the F.S.B. I
don’t know. I am head of the Chechen Republic. I am not a Muscovite.”
The uncomfortable questions are not likely to go away anytime soon.
Speculation about Mr. Kadyrov’s role began immediately after the
authorities announced that they had arrested the five Chechen suspects,
including Zaur Dadayev, who served in one of Mr. Kadyrov’s security
battalions. In a curious posting on Instagram, Mr. Kadyrov said he knew
Mr. Dadayev personally as a “true Russian patriot.”
Questions mounted when just a few days later Mr. Putin gave a state
award to Mr. Kadyrov (and to Andrei K. Lugovoi, who was charged by
Britain with killing the fugitive Russian intelligence officer,
Aleksandr V. Litvinenko, by poisoning his tea with polonium).
In Chechnya, Mr. Nemtsov was perhaps best known for leading a petition
drive in 1996 that gathered one million signatures to protest the first
Chechen war. And given the republic’s history and reputation for
violence, skeptics of the government’s investigation say that charging
Chechens with his murder is simply too convenient.
Supporters of Mr. Kadyrov say that his enemies in Moscow are trying to
undermine his relationship with Mr. Putin. Mr. Kadyrov, in his post on
Instagram, accused the United States of trying “to cause chaos and
instability in Russia.”
Relatives of the suspects insist that they are innocent.
“I know they are not guilty; I know my sons,” Zulai A. Gubasheva, the
mother of two of the suspects, Anzor and Shagid Gubashev, said in an
interview at her home in the town of Malgobek, in Ingushetia, a region
bordering Chechnya. Ms. Gubasheva is also an aunt of Mr. Dadayev, the
suspect whom Mr. Kadyrov called a patriot.
Human rights monitors in Moscow who visited the suspects in prison say
there are signs they may have been tortured, and despite early reports
of confessions all now seem to be denying the charges.
Though there are sporadic flare-ups in violence, Chechnya, with a
population of more than 1.3 million, has enjoyed relative calm in recent
years, a result of Mr. Kadyrov’s authoritarian rule and a sustained
crackdown on jihadists that has driven many to neighboring Dagestan and
Ingushetia, to Syria, or to support the Islamic state.
Portraits of Mr. Putin hang on buildings all throughout the rebuilt
Chechen capital, often alongside similar portraits of Mr. Kadyrov’s
father, Akhmad, who became president in 2003 and was assassinated in 2004.
Islam Saidayev, who works in the Chechen government counseling youths
against extremism, rejected the idea that Chechens had killed Mr.
Nemtsov. The opposition leader had invited his own death, Mr. Saidayev
said, by taking on a system that could not be defeated.
“The Russian Federation is a big train,” he said. “Maybe it’s going in
the wrong direction, but no one can stop it. Nemtsov stood on the tracks
and tried to stop it. Of course, it ran over him.”
The arrested men, he said, were being framed: “It’s just settled opinion
that anything bad is done by Chechens.”
Alexandra Odynova contributed reporting from Grozny, and Neil
MacFarquhar from Moscow.
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