The Chechen government called Artemy Lebedev’s letter to his “mountain brother” an attempt to “promote Kadyrov’s name” • Meduza • RIMA

The Chechen government called Artemy Lebedev’s letter to his “mountain brother” an attempt to “promote Kadyrov’s name”

Chechen Minister for National Policy, Foreign Relations, Press and Information Dzhambulat Umarov called designer Artemy Lebedev's appeal to the "mountain brother" about a forced public apology "an attempt to promote himself in the name of Ramzan Kadyrov." It is reported by "Rain".

On the air of the TV channel, Umarov called Lebedev a "dummy" and added that the designer in his text "admits that he is zero" and a "coward." “His leftist, so to speak, attempt to promote himself in the name of Ramzan Kadyrov is also zero,” Dozhd quoted the Chechen government minister as saying.

[Umarov added] that the designer "shouldn't have blamed cowardice on all those who really realized their mistakes and really apologized."

Rain

On December 20, designer Artemy Lebedev published an “open letter to a mountain brother” condemning the practice of forced public apologies, which is widespread primarily in Chechnya. The name of the addressee was not mentioned in the text.
Lebedev expressed the opinion that people who apologized on camera, acting under pressure, “didn’t really apologize,” and the rest of the people “do not believe these apologies either.” The designer emphasized that he would say "any apology to any camera" if "a soldering iron is brought to his ass."
Chechen television often shows stories in which people who criticized the local authorities publicly apologize, including personally to the head of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. Meduza wrote extensively about this phenomenon.
The practice of public apologies also exists outside of Chechnya. In December 2017, a RANEPA student was forced to apologize on camera for his words about Caucasian girls on social networks (on December 21, it became known that his offenders were expelled). The TNT TV channel and the leadership of Comedy Club Production had to apologize to representatives of Ingushetia for a sketch about a girl from Ingushetia in an escort agency.