The assassination of the Kremlin-backed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov leaves Moscow with few reliable levers of influence over the troubled republic and could spark an escalation of violence in a region never known for stability, analysts said.
Sunday's bomb blast in a Grozny stadium that claimed Kadyrov's life may also have shattered Russian President Vladimir Putin's only reliable hope of finding a way out of a war that he started more than four years ago.
The timing of Kadyrov's assassination was almost a slap in Putin's face, coming just two days after he was inaugurated for a second term as president in a ceremony the Russian leader used to declare that peace had finally returned to the restless Caucasus region after a decade of violence.
"With the death of Kadyrov, Russia suffered a great strategic defeat in Chechnya," said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer.
"It is very probable that a conflict between Kadyrov's forces and the other armed factions in Chechnya will only escalate.
"It does not really matter who replaces Kadyrov -- Chechnya
is facing the serious risk of
disintegrating into utter chaos," he warned.
Kadyrov was never an easy figure for Putin to trust. The former imam fought on the side
of the Chechen rebels in the first 1994-96 war and later became something of a local warlord.
But he himself appeared
disillusioned with the lawless Chechen government that ruled the republic in the years of its de facto independence between 1996 and 1999.
He switched sides to the Russians when Putin launched the second war in October, 1999, in what was meant to be a lightning "anti-terror" operation.
Kadyrov appeared to win the Kremlin's trust when he used his local contacts to allow Russian forces to take the republic's second city, Gudermes, without battle as federal troops moved on the capital Grozny in the campaign's first weeks.
The Kremlin, analysts suggest, understood that Kadyrov was not very trustworthy, but remained the only figure powerful enough to impose his control over the dozens of gangs and armed factions roaming Chechnya while keeping cordial relations with Moscow.
Putin's team helped Kadyrov win Chechnya's controversial presidential election last October and then allowed him to develop
a massive local security force that was looked on with suspicion
not only by the rebels but also
Russian troops stationed in Chechnya.
That force -- feared by locals because of reports that its men had no self-control and committed numerous human-rights violations -- was led by Kadyrov's son, Ramzan, a man believed to be in his late 20s who wears track suits and a shaggy beard.
Ramzan was appointed on Monday as the deputy chief of Chechnya -- a decision that suggests the Kremlin wants to keep the republic under the Kadyrov clan's control because it sees no other option.
Otherwise, the Kremlin could rely on obedient Chechens who now work in Moscow but exercise no true power in the republic, or negotiate with some of the rebels to give them a greater hand in leadership.
No one believes that Putin
will ever be willing to follow the second route.
"All of the political and military institutions were under Kadyrov's personal control," political analyst Sergei Markov said. "Now a crisis seems inevitable.
"The chances of Putin negotiating with the rebels were slim in the past. Now they stand at zero," he said.
Most analysts suggest that while Ramzan may run the local militia, he does not have enough administrative experience and is likely to be openly challenged by other factions smelling blood, if not his own men.
"There is no figure [other than Kadyrov himself] who could forge a consensus within Kadyrov's circle," including Ramzan, said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies.
The next Chechen presidential election must be held before Sept. 9. The administration is now headed on an interim basis by Sergei Abramov -- a 32-year-old former banker who analysts believe does not really want the job because of the risks it carries.
Taiwan aims to elevate its strategic position in supply chains by becoming an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for Nvidia Corp, providing everything from advanced chips and components to servers, in an attempt to edge out its closest rival in the region, South Korea. Taiwan’s importance in the AI ecosystem was clearly reflected in three major announcements Nvidia made during this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. First, the US company’s number of partners in Taiwan would surge to 122 this year, from 34 last year, according to a slide shown during CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech on Monday last week.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
When China passed its “Anti-Secession” Law in 2005, much of the democratic world saw it as yet another sign of Beijing’s authoritarianism, its contempt for international law and its aggressive posture toward Taiwan. Rightly so — on the surface. However, this move, often dismissed as a uniquely Chinese form of legal intimidation, echoes a legal and historical precedent rooted not in authoritarian tradition, but in US constitutional history. The Chinese “Anti-Secession” Law, a domestic statute threatening the use of force should Taiwan formally declare independence, is widely interpreted as an emblem of the Chinese Communist Party’s disregard for international norms. Critics
RSS