Yesterday’s assassination of Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov blows a gaping hole in Russia’s Chechnya policy. At a stroke not only is Moscow without its puppet, Chechnya is patently not a war won, an issue solved — although that was the impression President Putin had managed to give the rest of the world. Those who so willingly swallowed the illusion will have to think again. The separatists may have been reduced to small separate groups, but they can clearly strike out and kill at will.
The Chechens will weep no tears at Kadyrov’s death. But neither will they rejoice. He was despised by his people as a traitor — and this was not the first attempt to kill him. As mufti of Chechnya during the turbulent fighting in the 1990s he had also played the role of a guerrilla commander, calling for jihad against Russia. But by 1999 he had switched sides, ditching separatism for the profitable position of Moscow’s man.
Yet the Chechens elected him president last October. It was an act of desperation. They knew him as a turncoat, but they hoped that he might bring them the peace they craved. A peace of sorts did come about — the peace of subjugation, with 30,000 Russian troops to ensure it — but even that is now at risk. There has to be a real fear that Chechens will pay the price at the hands of the Russian Army as it moves to crush the remaining militants.
These may currently be uncoordinated, especially after last month’s killing of Abdul Aziz Al-Ghamdi, the Saudi militant credited with many of the recent suicide bombings in Russia, but Kadyrov’s assassination is bound to rally the separatists — something Moscow will not tolerate.
For Vladimir Putin, it is a personal disaster. He has staked his reputation on crushing the Chechens; every time there has been an election, being tough on Chechnya has been his winning campaign promise. What does he do now? He chose Kadyrov. Without him, the all-important pretense that Chechnya is both self-administered and loyal to Moscow is in tatters. Putin needs to make sure that someone loyal to Moscow takes over. But there is no obvious Chechen replacement waiting in the wings.
Kadyrov himself had seen his son Ramzam, a former boxer and head of Chechnya’s dreaded security service as his successor, but the man is even more hated than his father and Moscow knows it. To use him would be an admission that Chechnya can be held only by brute force, and the Kremlin is not going to make such a blindingly foolish mistake.
The only alternative would be to impose direct rule from Moscow, but that would be even more destructive and would fuel the fires of Chechen resentment.
