Problems, solved

Ramzan Kadyrov met on camera with Vladimir Putin — to tell him that all is well in Chechnya. Neither his health nor his son Adam’s recent behavior were mentioned.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has met with the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov. Recorded segments of their conversation were later broadcast on Russia’s state-run TV channels.

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the September 28 meeting was one of several conducted by Putin that morning, one of which had been “on camera,” as he put it. An hour before the meeting was publicized, the news agency RIA Novosti reported that the Russian president was about to have a meeting that would “address numerous questions.”

A three-minute segment of Putin’s conversation with the Chechen governor was aired on Russia-24. To make space for it, the channel had to interrupt a live broadcast from the Moscow Financial Forum.

Opening the meeting, Putin said that he and Kadyrov had agreed in advance “to talk about the situation in the republic,” meaning Chechnya. In terms of economy and the social sphere, the president said, “the dynamic is generally positive, and this is largely happening thanks to you and your team.”

Kadyrov said that he’d like to “boast” about the Chechen military and its achievements in Ukraine. Putin then conveyed his “very best wishes” to the Chechen fighters, adding that Russian commanders elsewhere in the army value them highly.

The president then returned to the topic of how things are going in Chechnya. “We don’t have any problems in our republic, they were solved a long time ago,” Kadyrov told him, adding that some “economic questions” still require Putin’s help, “as usual.” This ended the broadcast.

The recent scandal with Kadyrov’s son Adam, who had assaulted a detainee in a Chechen jail on camera, wasn’t discussed, at least not in the televised part of the meeting. Nor did the two politicians bring up the recent rumors of Kadyrov’s illness that had spread through Russian Telegram channels in mid-September.

According to some of those Telegram posts, Kadyrov was believed to be hospitalized at the Moscow-based Central Clinical Hospital (CCH), also known as “the Kremlin hospital.” On September 17, the Chechen governor’s Telegram channel published a video of Kadyrov taking a walk in a park. Three days later, Kadyrov claimed to have been at the CCH, but only to visit his uncle.

After the meeting, Kadyrov’s Telegram channel published a post, saying that some other questions had been raised in his conversation with Putin, but there would be more on that later.

On September 25, Kadyrov published a video of his 15-year-old son Adam beating a Russian detainee Nikita Zhuravel, who has been arrested and jailed for allegedly burning a Quran in public. Although Zhuravel had been detained in Volgograd, he was later transported to Chechnya.

Commenting on the violent footage, Kadyrov wrote that he was “proud” of his son. Russian lawyers and human rights advocates, meanwhile, see the video as sufficient grounds for prosecuting the younger Kadyrov. The Russian justice system, however, isn’t responding to their alarm.

The Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the video, because he simply “doesn’t want to,” as he put it.