Translated material
Paternal
Vladimir Putin entrusted Chechnya to Ramzan Kadyrov
Today the parliament of Chechnya will approve the candidacy of the new president of the republic, officially submitted on March 1 by the head of state. Last week, Russian Presidential Envoy to the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak presented three candidates to Vladimir Putin: acting. President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, deputy head of the presidential apparatus Muslim Khuchiev and head of the administration of the Grozny rural district Shakhid Jamaldaev . The president, as expected, chose Ramzan Kadyrov.“I hope that this appointment, if it happens, will ensure that you make every effort to ensure that the rehabilitation of Chechnya continues at the same pace,” Vladimir Putin said at yesterday’s meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov in Novo-Ogarevo. “So that people feel safer, so that every resident of Chechnya is motivated to develop their own republic and strengthen the Russian Federation.” “The people of Chechnya want to live as part of Russia in peace with other peoples,” Mr. Kadyrov said in response. - I will do everything to worthily continue the work started by my father and you, so that the citizens of the Chechen Republic live with dignity and feel safe, so that there are no such manifestations as terrorism and Wahhabism in the republic. This is a great responsibility before the Almighty, before you, before all the people. I will try to justify this trust.” “I very much count on this,” the Russian president responded.
The President directly asked Chechen deputies to support Ramzan Kadyrov. There was no need for this: the Chechen political system, and in particular the republican parliament elected in November 2005, has been specially configured over the past years to transfer power to the son of Akhmat Kadyrov. “I have no doubt at all that Kadyrov’s candidacy will be supported by almost all deputies,” Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, speaker of the lower house of the Chechen parliament, predicted yesterday. “My conviction is based on objective data related to Kadyrov’s activities as head of the Chechen government.”
A small snag is that, according to the Chechen constitution, the president is still elected by popular vote: only a constitutional assembly can change the elections to approval in parliament. The law on it was adopted last year, but the meeting itself never took place. Experts who have noticed this discrepancy even suspect that the Kremlin needs it as an additional control tool - in order to remind the new president at the right time about violations during approval. But in Grozny they are confident that all contradictions will be resolved: the constitution will be amended later, but now they will use the provision in it about the priority of federal laws over republican ones. “There are no legal obstacles to the confirmation of Ramzan Kadyrov,” Muslim Khuchiev, Mr. Kadyrov’s deputy chief of staff and his competitor on Dmitry Kozak’s list, told Vremya Novostei.
For the first time in the modern history of Russia, the position of head of the region was actually inherited - from father to son. The mufti of separatist Ichkeria, Akhmat Kadyrov, who defected to the Russian side, was elected president of Chechnya in October 2003. But instead of the four years required by the constitution, his presidential term lasted only seven months: on May 9, 2004 , he was killed in a terrorist attack in Grozny . A group of his supporters immediately proposed making his son Ramzan president, but he was only 27 years old, and one can become the head of a region only after 30. Then the former Chechen Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov was elected president-regent.
Some federal politicians considered the police general and expert on Russian legality Alkhanov as the guarantor of this very legality in Chechnya. But in the republic itself, no one hid the fact that the new president would remain so only until the 30th anniversary of Ramzan. Alu Alkhanov himself turned out to be too law-abiding to strengthen and defend his post. He spent most of his time outside Chechnya, had almost no supporters in the administration of the republic and did not have any power resources. He is remembered for his sad appearance, his strange proposal to rename Chechnya in order to improve its image, and the fact that he left his post alive - statistically, this is still a rarity for Chechen presidents.
Ramzan Kadyrov immediately after the death of his father became the security vice-premier of Chechnya, which allowed him to bring the republican security forces under his control. In the security forces of Chechnya, career police officers have largely given way to former militants who surrendered under the personal guarantees of first the father and then the son of the Kadyrovs. In October 2004, the son became a security adviser to Dmitry Kozak, in the summer of 2005 - the head of the Chechen United Russia, and in March 2006 - the first Chechen since Aslan Maskhadov to serve as prime minister of the republic.
In this post he achieved success. Almost all the militants went over to his side . The restoration of Grozny, which had clearly stalled for five years, finally got off the ground. It is assumed that the energetic and tough prime minister found a way to explain himself to the corrupt officials in the government, attracted money from the diaspora and invested part of his own: it is no secret that police captain Ramzan Kadyrov is one of the richest people in the North Caucasus. The attitude of his compatriots, at first tinged with gloomy colors due to fear of the power system created by Kadyrov, from which many families suffered, swung towards respect and support. At the same time, an unprecedented fear of expressing one’s opinion regarding the “first person” appeared in Chechnya, a tradition of nationwide celebration of his birthday and ubiquitous posters with his portraits.
If Alu Alkhanov had served his entire presidential term, a new president would have appeared in Chechnya after he appeared in Russia - and it is not a fact that the new head of state would have treated Ramzan Kadyrov as warmly as Vladimir Putin. In January-February, the emotional tension associated with the expectation of Mr. Alkhanov’s early departure exceeded acceptable limits and threatened to result in conflict. To prevent its development, Vladimir Putin took the side of the strong in it and fired Alkhanov on February 15 of this year .
Some analysts saw this as a loss for the center: Federal Alkhanov seemed more manageable. But it made no sense to control a figure that itself does not control anything. But by removing Alkhanov, the federal center built an ideal model of regional policy in Chechnya. The leader of the republic can literally do whatever he wants on his territory (even hire militants to work for the police), answering personally to the President of Russia. With this unprecedented internal political independence, Chechnya is deprived of access to the only attractive sector of its own economy - legal oil production there is controlled by the center in the person of Rosneft. True, Ramzan Kadyrov has already announced his intention to revise the existing scheme for distributing oil revenues in favor of the republic.
The head of the Effective Politics Foundation, Gleb Pavlovsky, confirmed that Ramzan Kadyrov is the ideal president of an ideal region: “This is a symbolic and political end to the war in Chechnya, which Russia waged on its territory for recognition of itself and which it won. Chechnya today, even more than some regions of Russia, is a federal subject and behaves like a federal subject. This is an incredible result. The majority of the political class in 2000 did not believe in principle that it would be achieved. It seems to me that some of the Russian governors are less deserving of their positions than Ramzan Kadyrov.”
Another pro-Kremlin political scientist, Sergei Markov, said yesterday that “Kadyrov has prospects for 40 years, but for this he needs to work hard and not make mistakes.” However, the political fate of Ramzan Kadyrov is still connected with the location of Vladimir Putin, so it can be predicted with relative confidence only until the spring of 2008.
The commissioner did not believe Kadyrov
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg, during a three-day visit to Chechnya that ends today, accused local authorities of systematically using torture and extracting confessions by force. He said he saw evidence of widespread human rights violations.
“There are indeed many examples of serious violations in the treatment of detainees and their torture. One of my recommendations, of course, would be to stop this practice,” Mr. Hammarberg said in a conversation with a Chechen correspondent for the British BBC . He explained that all the prisoners he met complained to him about ill-treatment: beatings, the use of electric shocks and attempts to extract confessions by force. Thus, attempts by acting President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, during a personal meeting, to convince the Commissioner of the Council of Europe that significant progress has been achieved in respect of human rights in the republic, was not crowned with success.
Almost 40% of Russians do not know who Kadyrov is
Russians have begun to assess the state of affairs in Chechnya more optimistically, according to sociologists from the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM). According to the results of a February poll released on Thursday in Moscow, 37% of Russians are inclined to believe that the situation in Chechnya is currently improving (35% thought so in June last year; 17% in October 2005). 5% of respondents believe that the situation is getting worse (in June 2006 - 6%; in October 2005 - 13%). A third of respondents believe that the situation is not changing (in June 2006 - 42%; in October 2005 - 53%).
According to sociologists of the foundation, “such a predominantly positive perception of the changes taking place in Chechnya probably predetermined the favorable attitude of a fairly large part of Russians” towards Ramzan Kadyrov, the current acting president of Chechnya. 18% of respondents have a positive attitude towards him, 8% have a negative attitude. However, the majority of respondents are either indifferent to Kadyrov (27%) or know nothing about him at all (39%).
More than a quarter (28%) of FOM survey participants believe that if Ramzan Kadyrov is confirmed as the president of the republic, the situation in Chechnya will be calmer, but 3% say the opposite, while every fifth (22%) believes that the situation will not change, 46% found it difficult to make assumptions on this matter. The answers to the question of how the standard of living will change in the republic were distributed in a similar way: 27% believe that it will increase, 3% - decrease, 22% - will not change, the rest (49%) found it difficult to predict.
The FOM survey was conducted on February 24-25 in 100 settlements in 44 regions, territories and republics of Russia with the participation of 1,500 respondents.