Translation Introduction:

Among the scenes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a specific shot that did not fail to get everyone's attention.

The hero of this scene is Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, leading thousands of fighters during a military parade that coincided with the threats of a Russian invasion.

Hours later, Kadyrov announced that he had deployed 12,000 Chechen fighters to support Russian forces in their invasion of Ukraine in compliance with the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin (Chechnya is one of the republics of the Russian Federation), which sheds light on the special relationship between the two men, and the price that Putin pays for Enjoy the complete loyalty of the ruler of Chechnya.

Translation text:

Imagine a ruler with an army of his own, made up of highly trained soldiers loyal to him personally, their orders to kill any soldier outside his authority on his lands at the sight of him.

This ruler has annexed part of the lands belonging to his neighbor to the West, and is planning similar steps on his eastern frontier, this ruler is portraying himself as a leading global Islamic leader, hosting international religious conferences, and concluding security cooperation agreements and military training with the rich Islamic dictatorships in Asia and the Persian Gulf He expands his "sheikhdom" relations with his neighbors whom he cannot intimidate, while his security forces regularly assault his exiled opponents until they are assassinated.

This is not the ruler of a small medieval principality in Asia Minor or the Arabian Peninsula, and he is not even the ruler of an independent state, he is the ruler of a territory located within the state of the Russian Federation in modern times!

This is the ruler of Chechnya and its mercurial tyrant, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Kadyrov was only 27 years old when his father was killed in an explosion targeting him in 2004, and his young son took over the leadership of the republic in the North Caucasus.

Since then, Kadyrov's power has steadily expanded beyond his official position as commander of one of Russia's eighty-five provinces.

After two bloody wars with Russia that lasted for a decade and a half, leaving tens of thousands of people dead, Chechnya lost its formal independence in 2000, but under the Ramzan Kadyrov regime, Chechnya now exercises more sovereignty than at any time in the past two decades, and this is likely to expand Sovereignty is in the future, as Kadyrov seems determined to try to expand the limits of his influence.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin shows almost complete disregard for the policies of his prodigal son that are destabilizing one of Russia's most fragile regions.

Emirate expansion

Things have changed a lot in the North Caucasus.

Kadyrov has always been considered a cruel and brutal ruler, but once he was content with his own little republic.

Putin, the patron to whom Kadyrov swears unlimited loyalty, had a fixed arrangement with the Chechen leader: do whatever you want within the borders of your principality, but keep things in Chechnya under control.

Given the scale of the insurgency in the North Caucasus, which claimed the lives of at least 1,000 Russian military personnel between 2009-2017, stability was Moscow's number one priority in the region.

In the past few years, the threat level from the insurgents has declined.

The Russian federal government launched a major counterinsurgency campaign ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Russian security forces killed or captured nearly all the leaders of the insurgency, while several thousand militants and mujahideen left the region to join the Islamic State (ISIS) and jihadist groups. other in Syria.

At the same time, Chechen forces loyal to Kadyrov intensified their pressure on the Chechen rebel sector, leading to the evacuation of militants from the mountainous regions of southern Chechnya.

By 2017, the Russian and Chechen security services had succeeded in almost completely destroying the armed rebel networks in the region.

This military victory allowed Kadyrov to pursue other priorities, such as establishing influence over his neighbors.

In mid-2018, under the pretext of infrastructure development, Kadyrov began expanding the dilapidated mountain road linking Chechnya with the Republic of Ingushetia, Chechnya's western neighbor within the Russian Federation.

Shortly thereafter, pictures surfaced of Chechen officials, surrounded by security forces, standing on Ingush land declaring it their own.

The implicit annexation was made official in late September, when Kadyrov signed an agreement with the leader of Ingushetia, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, to hand over nearly 10% of the territory of Ingushetia to Chechnya.

Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov (right), Russian President Putin (center) and Ingushetia leader Yunus-bek Yevkurov (left) (Reuters)

It is still not clear exactly why Yevkurov agreed to this deal, but it is likely that he was pressured hard by Kadyrov and that he did not expect that the deal would lead to the widespread demonstrations that followed.

The popular reaction in Ingushetia was unprecedented, with tens of thousands protesting in the streets against the agreement with Chechnya.

But after the Russian Constitutional Court approved the land transfer in early December, there was nothing the Ingush could do.

After Kadyrov successfully expanded his borders westward, he turned east.

In mid-November 2018, the Chechen parliament published a map showing the updated borders of the republic.

The map included not only the new lands of Ingushetia, but also other unexpected changes, as parts of the Republic of Dagestan (another autonomous region of Russia), located on the southeastern border of Chechnya, were incorporated into Kadyrov's "kingdom".

The map was quickly changed later to fix the apparent error, but the error was only a "prophecy".

On December 6, Kadyrov met with Dagestan leader Vladimir Vasiliev and discussed the issue of “border demarcation” between their two republics.

Within weeks, Magomed Daudov, the head of the Chechen parliament and a close ally of Kadyrov, was sent to Dagestan to discuss the issue, after the two republics established a joint commission on border demarcation.

In fact, Vasiliev, whom Moscow installed as President of the Republic of Dagestan in late 2017, is not a native Dagestani and may have underestimated the importance of land ownership issues in the region.

It is still not clear which of the lands of Dagestan will get Kadyrov, but the Dagestanis, like their Ingush counterparts, have reacted with fury to the news that their government may begin to cede territory to Chechnya.

Dagestan leader Vladimir Vasiliev (Reuters)

Beyond the Boundaries

In parallel with his expansion into the Russian Federation, Kadyrov is also improving relations with foreign partners.

Chechnya did not previously have close relations with the countries of the South Caucasus, a region that includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. In fact, Chechen battalions fought alongside the Russians in the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia, while Chechnya did not have strong ties with Azerbaijan, which does not She has a lot in common with her.

But recently, Kadyrov has become close to both.

A report on Chechen state television in December 2018 showed construction work on the small mountain road to the Chechen-Georgian border, announcing that the long-closed border crossing was scheduled to reopen “soon” (during the 1990s, this land-link road was The only one between independent Chechnya and the outside world other than Russia).

But Georgia's special envoy for relations with Russia said that his country had not heard anything about reopening the border crossing with Chechnya.

Despite this, it is clear that there are now increasing links between Grozny and Tbilisi, no matter what either side says.

In January of the same year, it was reported that the then-mayor of Grozny, Muslim Khushev, had traveled to Georgia on a previously unannounced visit.

(Khuchev's trip was not made public, and when journalists confronted him, he claimed he was on vacation.)

Kadyrov also visited Azerbaijan in person, where he met with President Ilham Aliyev in Baku to discuss further cooperation.

Kadyrov's visit to Azerbaijan and his meeting with President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on November 28, 2018 to discuss further cooperation

Security cooperation with the UAE

But Kadyrov may have made his most important foreign strides in Arab countries, as the Chechen leader has forged close friendships in recent years with leaders such as Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates.

Kadyrov also enjoys strong relations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, princes of the royal family in Bahrain, and leaders in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and these relations are likely to deepen further.

These relations contributed to the strengthening of Kadyrov's power.

Later, Chechnya opened one of the largest special forces training schools in the world, and all the instructors at the school were from the Chechen forces rather than the Russian armed forces.

Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all intend to send members of their elite forces for "counter-terrorism" training at this facility in Chechnya.

Although the school is officially named Russia's Spetsnaz University, it has absolutely nothing to do with Russia.

Give us money..but don't interfere

Things like border expansion, developing independent foreign relations, and having an independent army are all unusual characteristics of an autonomous region in a larger country.

For these reasons, analysts such as Ekaterina Skirianskaya describe Chechnya as an "inside outsider" and a "state within a state" in Russia.

But these characteristics may not be enough to describe the breadth of independence of Kadyrov's state.

At the moment, there is only one element that closely ties Chechnya and Russia, and that is money.

The Chechen authorities receive about 85% of their state budget in the form of federal transfers from Moscow.

The bulk of these funds are embezzled by Chechen officials or spent on unnecessary mega projects.

But with each new federal budget approved, Kadyrov demands additional funding, and he has issued tacit threats about what might happen to regional stability if Russia doesn't provide him with more money!

As usual, the Kremlin has acceded to his requests, and in the past withdrew plans to cut Chechnya's funding.

It happened publicly in 2016, when Kadyrov protested against a proposal to cut funding for his republic, declaring the move “unacceptable” for a region that had “just got back on its feet.” He summed up his latest request for more support succinctly: “We will achieve more if you give us the resources.” The necessary, and we will achieve more than that if you do not interfere in our affairs.”

Gazprom (Reuters)

A few weeks after Kadyrov's statement, a Chechen court in the capital, Grozny, canceled nine billion rubles ($135 million) in debts that Chechnya owed to the Russian oil giant Gazprom, which Chechen authorities claimed was the result of spending primarily by citizens. But Chechen citizens insisted that the debts were owed by their government and not by them, noting that they had been forcibly deprived of part of their salaries to pay similar debts shortly before.

Gazprom officials announced their intention to appeal the decision, while leaders of other Russian provinces announced that they should be allowed to cancel their own debts, as in Chechnya, after expressing their anger that Kadyrov was not held accountable for such actions.

It seems likely that the money that was intended for the gas needs of the citizens of Chechnya went instead to the "Akhmat Tower" project to build a 102-story skyscraper at a cost of one billion dollars.

The absence of any public rebuke to Kadyrov indicates that Putin does not view his policies as a real threat to regional stability.

playing with fire

One of the most intriguing aspects of Kadyrov's expansionist ambitions is the almost complete absence of any official response from the Kremlin.

Regarding the Ingushetia crisis, there was only one public comment from Putin, even this comment came via an indirect source, by Yevkurov who was describing a conversation between him and Putin, in which the latter urged him to resolve the issue through “democratic methods” and not through Power.

But it is not clear what these "democratic methods" Putin is referring to: Ingush activists demanded a referendum on the transfer of land ownership, but Yevkurov rejected this demand.

There have been no recent statements from the Kremlin regarding Kadyrov's actions at all.

The official silence of the Kremlin allows observers only to speculate about the nature of the real relationship between Moscow and Grozny.

But the absence of any public rebuke to Kadyrov suggests that Putin does not view his policies as a real threat to regional stability.

In the past, when Kadyrov's excesses were confined to Chechnya itself, this view may have been understandable, albeit short-sighted and immoral.

But now, with the Chechen leader extending his influence beyond the borders of his republic, the absence of any attempt by Moscow to contain him, and even the tacit approval of his presence, is fraught with danger.

Land disputes, from demands for a united Circassian republic to separatist nationalist movements in Dagestan, remain the most troublesome issues in the North Caucasus, where borders have been constantly redrawn over the past century.

The Russian Constitutional Court's official ruling on Kadyrov's acquisition of land from Ingushetia set a precedent for revising existing borders, something that had long been avoided, and for good reason.

Indeed, a panel of Russian experts on the North Caucasus recently predicted that Kadyrov's unaccountable behavior increases the risk of stoking popular grievances and fueling rebellion in the region.

As the Chechen leader continues to pursue his aggressive regional policies and independent foreign relations, he risks pushing the North Caucasus, a region currently enjoying temporary stability after decades of conflict, into a state of dangerous instability.

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Translation: Karim Traboulsi.

This article has been translated from Foreign Affairs and does not necessarily reflect the Meydan website.