The will of Ramzan Kadyrov, the ruler of Chechnya, is law in the Russian North Caucasus republic – and beyond.

On Thursday last week, his security guards arrested the mother of one of his critics, the lawyer Abubakar Yangulbayev: plainclothes gunmen driving an SUV with Chechen license plates and posing as police officers broke into the home of Yangulbayev's parents in Nizhny Novgorod.

The city, which lies by road 420 kilometers east of Moscow and 1,800 kilometers north of the Chechen capital Grozny, is the headquarters of the "Committee Against Torture" for which Yangulbayev worked.

According to a human rights lawyer, Kadyrov's men beat those present and presented a resolution

both parents are to be brought to Grozny as “witnesses in a case of fraud”.

The father was saved by the fact that he was able to identify himself as a judge at the Supreme Court, and the mother was taken along.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Kadyrov sees all opponents as terrorists.

As a judge, Jangulbayev's father participated in an unjust verdict against a protégé of the "Committee Against Torture", but came into conflict with Kadyrov about the activities of another son and had to submit his resignation.

The family left Chechnya in 2017, now self-supported by the organization Abubakar Yangulbayev started working for.

In December he announced that around 40 relatives had been kidnapped in Chechnya.

Five other Kadyrov critics reported the same.

Putin's spokesman a sought-after man

In the republic, relatives are often forced to break away from relatives. Shortly before the turn of the year, Yangulbayev was arrested and interrogated in a region neighboring Chechnya on charges of "justifying terrorism", but was released. The regime has linked Yangulbayev to an opposition Telegram channel, which it denies. But after media close to the businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is notorious for mercenaries and internet trolls, published allegedly fake chats as evidence of the connection to the channel, according to Jangulbayev, the lawyer fled Russia and ended his work for the "Committee Against Torture".

In Russia, it is customary to ask the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin about Kadyrov's gaffes.

That was his "fantastic story," said Dmitry Peskov.

One prefers not to believe unconfirmed reports.

But Kadyrov soon wrote on his own Telegram channel that the Jangulbayev family "waits either for a place in prison or in the ground."

His TV station showed pictures of Jangulbayev's mother, who said no violence was used against her and that she was receiving her diabetes medication.

Kadyrov threatened the woman, who is said to have been detained for 15 days, with jail for attacking a police officer and claimed that the whole family "clearly supports terrorist groups": all Yangulbayevs should be arrested or "if they resist, destroyed".

As a result, Jangulbayev's father and sister also fled Russia.

The EU called on Russia to release the mother, Jangulbayev appealed to Putin to replace the leadership in Grozny, all to no avail.

Kadyrov, gaining momentum, also declared the head of the "Committee Against Torture" and a journalist of "Novaya Gazeta", both old enemies, as "terrorists".

Peskov called this a "personal opinion", praised Kadyrov's "very effective" fight against terrorists and, referring to Chechnya's bloody history, emphasized that it is a "special region".

But the Kremlin itself has also begun to persecute Putin's opponents as "terrorists and extremists": On Tuesday, the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalnyj and a number of his comrades-in-arms were put on a corresponding list by the financial supervisory authority.