Putin’s Chechen enforcer

RAMZAN KADYROV has few inhibitions. Last week, just before the first anniversary of the murder of Boris Nemtsov, a liberal Russian opposition leader, by a member of Mr Kadyrov’s security services, the Chechen strongman posted a video on his Instagram page. It depicted Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. “Kasyanov is in Strasbourg to get money for the opposition,” Mr Kadyrov commented under the video, in a clear warning to opposition politicians. “Whoever still doesn’t get it, will.”

Mr Kadyrov has been ratcheting up the invective for a while. Last month he called liberals “vile jackals” who should be treated as “enemies of the people”. In an article in the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, Mr Kadyrov offered psychiatric treatment to opponents of President Vladimir Putin. He also staged a large rally in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, lest anyone doubt his popular support.

For many Russians, and not only opposition figures, Mr Kadyrov’s latest antics went too far. Ella Panfilova, a human-rights ombudsman in the Kremlin, said his statements should be examined for signs of “extremism”. The Levada Centre, an independent pollster, found 60% of Russians thought Mr Kadyrov’s threats unacceptable. Konstantin Senchenko, an independent politician from Krasnoyarsk, called Mr Kadyrov “a disgrace to Russia” on his Facebook page. The next day, after threatening calls from Chechnya, Mr Senchenko was forced to apologise profusely.

Kirill Rogov, a Russian political analyst, says Mr Kadyrov’s threats epitomise a transformation of Russia’s regime in the face of a shrinking economy. “This is a new type of repression. In the past the regime dealt with its opponents by charging them with economic crimes. Now the stakes have been raised,” he says.

Russian repression is unlike that of the Soviet regime, which had a monopoly on violence. Mr Putin outsources his terror to thugs like Mr Kadyrov, who ensures that Mr Putin routinely draws over 99% of the vote in elections in Chechnya. In December 2014 Mr Kadyrov paraded some 20,000 of his own well-armed troops through Grozny, Chechnya’s capital. “Kadyrov can do the dirty work for [the Kremlin] and say things which they cannot yet afford to utter,” says Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank.

Mr Kadyrov’s threats arrived just as the Russian government completed its investigation into Nemtsov’s murder. Once groomed for the job of Russia’s president, Nemtsov was assassinated near Red Square in February 2015 by Zaur Dadaev, the former deputy head of a battalion controlled by Mr Kadyrov. The investigation sheds little light on who ordered the killing, or why. The investigator ignored requests from Nemtsov’s lawyers to question Mr Kadyrov or his entourage. The Chechen leader defends Mr Dadaev as a Russian patriot.

Rank-and-file security officers resent Mr Kadyrov, seeing him as one of the rebels they fought during the first Chechen war. But Mr Kadyrov enjoys protection from Mr Putin, who responded to his protégé’s latest provocations by calling him an effective worker. The Kremlin awarded Mr Kadyrov a medal the day after Nemtsov’s murder, and he continues to receive ample funding from Moscow. Last year, while overall budget transfers to Russia’s regions declined by 3%, funding for Chechnya rose by 8%. Mr Putin has ordered his cabinet to transfer ownership of a large oil and gas company in Chechnya from federal control to that of Mr Kadyrov’s government.

Ever since the Soviet collapse, Chechnya has divided Russian society. Ironically, in the early 1990s when Mr Kadyrov was fighting against Moscow, Russian liberals—including Nemtsov—campaigned against Russia’s Chechen war. Nemtsov collected a million signatures in support of stopping it. Conversely, the rabid nationalists who once cheered Russia’s brutal campaign against the Chechens now see Mr Kadyrov as their hero in a battle against liberals and Westernisers.

Mr Kadyrov has turned Chechnya into a caricature of Russian authoritarianism, with his own personality cult and system of extortion, torture and killings to keep the population in line. As Alexander Baunov of the Moscow Carnegie Centre argues, Mr Kadyrov appeals to Russians who consider the current regime too soft. They see in Chechnya a model for Russia’s future. Mr Kadyrov’s impunity brings that one step closer.