When Putin became prime minister in 1999, Chechnya topped his to-do list. He was a novice, but he knew that to re-impose Moscow’s will on Chechnya, he needed a local to give conquest a Chechen face.

Putin pacified Chechnya with extreme prejudice. Artillery shattered Grozny; FSB agents abducted thousands of young Chechen men, hundreds of whom were never seen again. The Russian electorate, deeply scarred by their country’s steep decline, loved it. In 2000, though barely known just a year earlier, Putin won the presidency. It was a victory he owed to Chechnya. And he owed Chechnya to Akhmad Kadyrov.

Kadyrov is essentially employed by Putin to stop Chechens from killing Russians, but he has also been linked to a long list of killings. The motives have tended to be, like Kadyrov himself, crude and straightforward: someone threatened his hold on power, and ended up dead.

“Kadyrov stands above Russian law,” Yashin said. “Any attempt to remove him from his job, or to prosecute him, could provoke a new Chechen war. Putin is undoubtedly scared of such a development, which is why he can’t solve the Kadyrov problem.”

bbabo.Net