The “war” between the Federal and the Chechen Security Services, unleashed by Kadyrov’s words, didn’t and will not come true. Some heads will fall, the balance will remain untouched and no man of Kadyrov will fire on Russian police.
It must be said immediately. At first, the words of Ramzan Kadyrov broadcasted on Chechen TV, made everybody think the worst. “I officially state that if [armed people] turn up on your territory without you knowing about this – be they Muscovites or Stavropol natives – shoot to kill. We should be reckoned with,” he said during a meeting with the leaders of his security service. Words that sound like a declaration of war, especially when considered that they come from the mouth of the second most powerful person of Russia after Putin; the true undisputed king of his small Chechen kingdom. A feud within the Russian Federation.
The Interior Ministry immediately declared Kadyrov’s words “unacceptable” (in truth, a rather bland reaction), while some observers took them literally. “Kadyrov declares Chechnya’s independence from Russia,” wrote Brian Whitmore, one of the most brilliant Kremlinologists on the market.
But what if none of this?
Illegal operation
Everything started from a Stavropol police operation conducted in Chechnya without, according to the president, the permission of the local Interior Ministry. The police of the neighboring Russian city intervened in Grozny on April 19 to arrest a man on the wanted list, Dzhambulav Dadaev, who was killed during the operation. Even more seriously – according to Kadyrov’s reconstruction – Stavropol police were coordinated by the Temporary Operative Grouping of Organs and Subunits, VOGOiP, from their headquarter in the Russian military base in Khankala, on the outskirts east of Grozny.
Things get even murkier because, according to eyewitnesses, Dadaev was shot in cold blood as he surrendered with his hands up. It’s also not good for unclear for what was he wanted. So the operation was clumsy that the North Caucasus branch of the Federal Investigative Committee has opened an investigation for abuse of power.
Too many oddities
There is not only the mysterious death of Dadaev. There is also the strange coincidence that he had the same surname of another Chechen, named Zaur, imprisoned in Moscow as the main suspect in the murder of Boris Nemtsov. Murder that served, according to many, to the FSB as an excuse to bring up Kadyrov (which could be called to witness in the process). It’s no secret that the Chechen president has among its most bitter enemies in the Kremlin the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov.
But it could just be coincidences, and the operation of the police Stavropol in Grozny just a (yet another) example of bad modus operandi of the Russian law enforcement.
For those who saw a challenge launched from the Caucasus mountains to the palaces of Moscow, Kadyrov has rushed to make an act of submission to the Tsar. “I am a loyal infantryman of the Commander in Chief,” he told RIA Novosti. “If I am given an order, I will carry it out 100%. he tells me to leave (his post as head of Chechnya) — I will leave, and I am ready to die on his order too. To try to pit Kadyrov against the President is ridiculous. He is our Supreme Commander in Chief.” Meanwhile, the video of the meeting with the heads of his security forces has been removed from the network.
But there is no step off. Both then and now is always the same Kadyrov. Who does nothing but play the role of undisputed leader in his fief, ready to spit fire to defend his people (or to give the impression of doing so), but in the end always loyal to his king, from whose only its power comes from. Kadyrov, in short, playing Kadyrov.
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The “war” between the Federal and the Chechen Security Services, unleashed by Kadyrov’s words, didn’t and will not come true. Some heads will fall, the balance will remain untouched and no man of Kadyrov will fire on Russian police.
It must be said immediately. At first, the words of Ramzan Kadyrov broadcasted on Chechen TV, made everybody think the worst. “I officially state that if [armed people] turn up on your territory without you knowing about this – be they Muscovites or Stavropol natives – shoot to kill. We should be reckoned with,” he said during a meeting with the leaders of his security service. Words that sound like a declaration of war, especially when considered that they come from the mouth of the second most powerful person of Russia after Putin; the true undisputed king of his small Chechen kingdom. A feud within the Russian Federation.
