Strongman, The

Avenue.
    The strategy has been partially successful. Despite the continuation of terrorist atrocities, mainly outside of Chechnya, by the remaining Islamic rebels, Kadyrov has restored a semblance of order within the republic. Grozny, totally destroyed in the two wars, has been largely rebuilt, using petrodollars thrown at it from Moscow. It boasts Europe’s largest mosque. It has normal shops and cafés again – something I thought I would never see when I reported from the bombed-out city in the late 1990s. But the strategy is a double-edged sword for Putin. The muscular, bearded Kadyrov is a wayward and ruthless individual. I visited his palace outside the village of Tsentoroy in 2008 and got a taste of his fabulous wealth – the grounds include an artificial lake and a zoo with panthers and leopards – and his primitive way of thinking. Asked what he thought about the death of the rebel leader Shamil Basayev, the mastermind behind most of the recent terrorist attacks in Russia, Kadyrov replied: ‘I was delighted when I heard he was killed ... and then sad, because I wanted to kill him with my own hands.’ He has introduced elements of Sharia law in his fiefdom, and congratulated men who sprayed paintballs at women who appeared in public with their heads uncovered.
    American diplomats attending a riotous wedding reception in Dagestan in August 2006 witnessed Kadyrov, the guest of honour, dancing with a gold-plated pistol stuck down the back of his jeans and showering dancing children with hundred-dollar bills. 5
    True to Chechen tradition, Kadyrov is quick to promise retribution and blood vengeance on his enemies. On his watch many opponents have disappeared. His former bodyguard, Umar Israilov, who went public about torture and killings by the Kadyrovites that he had witnessed, was shot dead in Vienna in January 2009. Six months later Natalya Estemirova, who worked for the Memorial human rights centre in Grozny, was abducted and murdered. Kadyrov described her as a woman ‘without honour, dignity or conscience’. As for Anna Politkovskaya, in 2004 she published an account of a terrifying meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov, during which he boasted that his hobbies were fighting and women. The interview included the following comical exchange:
    ‘What kind of education do you have?’
    ‘Higher. Law. I’m graduating soon, sitting my exams.’
    ‘What kind of exams?’
    ‘What do you mean, what kind? Exams, that’s all.’
    ‘What’s the name of the college you are graduating from?’
    ‘A branch of the Moscow Business Institute, in Gudermes. The law faculty.’
    ‘What are you specialising in?
    ‘I’m a lawyer.’
    ‘But is your diploma in criminal law, civil law ...?’
    ‘I can’t remember. I wrote something, but I’ve forgotten. There’s a lot of events going on.’
    Kadyrov was later made an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.
    Politkovskaya was taken back to see him again the next morning, and found him with a Kadyrovite in a black T-shirt who snarled at her: ‘You should have been shot back in Moscow, in the street, the way they do it in Moscow.’ And Kadyrov chimed in: ‘You’re an enemy. You should be shot.’
    Politkovskaya described him as a ‘baby dragon, raised by the Kremlin. Now they need to feed him. Otherwise he will set everything on fire.’ She was about to publish another article about human rights abuses and torture in Chechnya when she was killed.
    Her murder took place not only on Putin’s birthday but two days after Kadyrov’s. (I know this because I happened to be sitting next to Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, in a Moscow restaurant that evening, when he took out his mobile phone and called ‘Ramzan’ to congratulate him fulsomely on turning 30.) Could the murder have been someone’s slightly belated ‘birthday present’ to the Chechen strongman? Or could it have been Kadyrov’s gift to his ‘idol’, Putin? In Russia’s criminal underworld, such an idea is not implausible. Or was the murder designed to discredit one or other of them? Or was there some other motive? One thing was clear: the Kremlin was intensely annoyed by Politkovskaya’s work – particularly some of her more extravagant claims, such as her assertion that the 2002 Moscow theatre siege, which ended with 130 deaths, was stage-managed by one of Russia’s secret services.
    Prosecutors brought three Chechens to trial, but they were acquitted in 2009 for lack of