What Are Some Issues Russia Has Had Controlling Chechnya
How a Chechen Abduction Exposes Putin's Problems at Habitation
A furor over the arrest of a woman by agents of the Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov shows the internal challenges facing President Vladimir 5. Putin, fifty-fifty as he tries to project global power.
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russian federation is flexing his military and diplomatic muscle in a tense standoff with the W over Ukraine, projecting power and occasional menace in his pursuit of global influence. Merely the contempo abduction of a 52-year-onetime diabetic woman in primal Russia has made clear that Mr. Putin still has vexing challenges in his ain lawn that crave a skillful political juggling deed.
The woman, Zarema Musayeva, was dragged from her apartment edifice in her slippers and pushed into a black S.U.V. after men who identified themselves equally police officers forced their style into her apartment and punched her husband, Sayda Yangulbayev, a 63-year-old retired federal judge from Chechnya, and their lawyer.
The men had said they were supposed to take the couple to Chechnya, more i,100 miles away, to exist questioned as witnesses in a fraud example, but information technology soon became clear that Ms. Musayeva'south abduction was role of a hunt for two of their sons, prominent government critics who had infuriated the Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.
Now, 3 weeks subsequently, Mr. Yangulbayev has fled Russia with his daughter, fearing for their condom, and Ms. Musayeva is being detained, charged with assaulting a law officer, though her lawyers say she tin "hardly walk." Mr. Kadyrov has vowed to "take intendance of'' the family, saying "there'due south a place waiting for Yangulbayev's family, either in jail or under the ground.''
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The episode has laid blank — not for the first time — the pitfalls of the devil's deal Mr. Putin has made with Mr. Kadyrov, a ruthless leader who exerts almost total command in Chechnya, a turbulent, predominantly Muslim region in the North Caucasus with a population of 1.iv million.
The Chechen leader'southward brutal excesses are part of an assortment of domestic difficulties facing Mr. Putin, even as he takes an increasingly aggressive stance on the world phase, amassing troops on Ukraine's border and seeking to rewrite the European security architecture.
Mr. Putin oversees an underperforming economic system centered almost solely on oil and commodities. He has had to crack downwardly on Russian dissidents like Aleksei A. Navalny, driving many into exile with the threat of imprisonment. He has suppressed media criticism and tried to rewrite Russian history past liquidating the well-nigh prominent human rights group in Russia, whose piece of work exposed the brutalities of the Soviet era.
Mr. Kadyrov delivers strong electoral support for Mr. Putin while stamping out separatist sentiment and political dissent in his region. In return, he is rewarded with a lavish upkeep and the ability to govern Chechnya as his personal fief, persecuting those who disagree with him with impunity.
Just the public nature of Ms. Musayeva'south abduction — and the Kremlin's tacit acceptance of it — has upset that rest. Family unit members recorded the episode and posted it virtually immediately on social networks, horrifying Russians who chafe at Mr. Putin'south indulgence of Mr. Kadyrov.
"Putin made an understanding with Kadyrov and gave him the Chechen people as serfs," said Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition politician who wrote a report on the Chechen leader in 2016 following the assassination of another opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, in Moscow. The abduction, he said, constituted a power play that showed Mr. Kadyrov is above the constabulary.
The reaction in Russia has hardly sidetracked Mr. Putin from his unmarried-minded pursuit of his strategic goals in Europe. But information technology has provided a troubling domestic properties. In recent weeks, the Chechen leader'south actions take been a major story in Russia's independent media. A petition initiated by Mr. Yashin to remove Mr. Kadyrov as Chechen leader has drawn 200,000 signatures.
This was not the start time Chechen forces have finer operated outside their region — Mr. Kadyrov's allies are believed to be responsible for the murders of his critics in Russian federation and in Western Europe. But this incident, in the urban center of Nizhny Novgorod, only 260 miles from Moscow, showed that "the geography of these abductions is expanding," said Olga Sadovskaya of the Russia-based Committee Against Torture.
Paradigm
Ms. Musayeva'due south sons Abubakar, 29, and Ibragim, 27, say they believe their mother was arrested because the government could not reach them later on they fled abroad, fearing they would be tortured and even killed.
Abubakar Yangulbayev, a human rights lawyer with the Commission Confronting Torture, has been a thorn in Mr. Kadyrov's side because of the organization's work exposing human rights abuses in Chechnya. Ibragim Yangulbayev is widely believed to be backside the popular Telegram channel 1ADAT, which advocates for Chechnya's independence from Moscow and publishes materials that insult Mr. Kadyrov and the government.
"This is a hostage-taking with the need that specific people — me and my blood brother — return to Chechnya to be lynched by Kadyrov," Abubakar Yangulbayev said in a video interview from an undisclosed European metropolis where he had sought protection. "This is typical terrorist behavior."
Tanya Lokshina, of Human being Rights Watch, said Ms. Musayeva's forced return to Chechnya was "consistent with the longstanding pattern of commonage penalization by which the Chechen leadership persecutes unabridged families, even distant relatives, for the declared actions of 1 of their members."
Chechen authorities pointed to a vitriolic Feb. two rally in the capital of Grozny which they say drew hundreds of thousands of people — an unverified number — as a sign of back up for Mr. Kadyrov'due south hardline approach against the Yangulbayevs. Participants cursed the family and burned photographs of them.
"That'due south how Mr. Kadyrov shows the Kremlin that he is in control," Ms. Lokshina said, referring to the rally.
Both brothers say they tin can be of more assistance to their mother from away. Man rights advocates say the accuse against Ms. Musayeva is a dubious way of keeping her in detention for at least two months, despite the fact that, according to Russian law, people with diabetes cannot be held in special detention centers.
In a hearing before the Chechen Supreme Court on Thursday, she asked to be held nether business firm arrest, proverb "I am dying quietly." Her request was denied. She faces upwardly to 10 years in prison.
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The actions confronting the Yangulbayev family and their supporters drew only a muted response from the Kremlin. After Mr. Putin met Mr. Kadyrov in Moscow last week, the Kremlin'due south spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said the two men "discussed economic matters" and added that "topics related to the work of law enforcement agencies were touched upon," without any elaboration, or condemnation.
Before that meeting, Mr. Kadyrov had branded Elena Milashina, a prominent journalist who writes about homo rights abuses in Chechnya, and the caput of the Committee Against Torture, Igor Kalyapin, "terrorist accomplices" considering of their support for the Yangulbayevs. He said Chechen authorities "have always liquidated terrorists and their accomplices" and asked police enforcement bodies why no criminal cases had been opened against them.
Mr. Peskov said the comments constituted the Chechen leader'due south "personal opinion."
Some critics translate the Kremlin's silence on the event every bit a sign of vulnerability for Mr. Putin's regime.
"This suggests that in the fight with Mr. Kadyrov, relatively speaking, the federal government is weak and this weakness is felt and understood," by the Kremlin, said Ms. Sadovskaya of the Committee Against Torture.
Many analysts say Mr. Putin simply does non intendance near Chechnya's actions, no matter how vicious, as long every bit no i close to him is targeted. Moscow fought 2 wars confronting Chechen separatists, from 1994-1996 and 1999-2009, in which more than 160,000 people were killed.
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Mr. Kadyrov fought alongside his male parent against Russia in the kickoff Chechen war, only both defected to the Russian side during the 2d, becoming influential power brokers. The wars are seen today as a turning indicate for post-Soviet Russia considering the crackdown against Chechnya additional Mr. Putin's image, facilitating his rise to power, and effectively put an terminate to the period of openness and liberalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Kadyrov's father, Akhmad, became Chechnya's commencement president, but was assassinated in 2004. His son assumed the function in 2007, shortly after turning thirty. Since so, his combination of coercive violence and the unconditional support of Mr. Putin have kept him in power.
He regularly pulls in more 95 per centum of the vote for himself in elections. He advocates a bourgeois interpretation of Islam that suppresses women's rights, and his security forces have orchestrated mass roundups of 50.Thousand.B.T.Q. people.
"Chechnya is a classic dictatorial state led by a crazy tyrant who uses the police force only for personal gain," Abubakar Yangulbayev said in an interview. "And every year Putin says that Kadyrov is a not bad guy."
His blood brother Ibragim, who advocates independence for Chechnya, said he believed Mr. Kadyrov was a "pure project of the Kremlin," used to suppress the dissent of people like him, who seek independence from Moscow'south rule.
"Putin put Kadyrov in power in order to go on Chechnya forcibly in such a country that Chechnya would not call back about independence at all," he said, which is why his henchmen "kidnap people who say what they think."
Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.
What Are Some Issues Russia Has Had Controlling Chechnya,
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/world/europe/chechnya-abduction-putin-russia.html
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