Russia announced an end to its military operations in Chechnya on Thursday, bringing to a close 15 years of on-and-off conflict in the republic and enhancing the power of the former separatist that the Kremlin sponsored for head of state, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.
Russia’s national anti-terrorist committee said that beginning on Thursday the military restrictions in force in Chechnya were abolished. Moscow has maintained a strict security regime for a decade in the republic, ever since Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, then newly ascended to the Russian presidency, sent troops back into Chechnya in 1999 to crush separatists who had won de facto independence during the 1994-1996 war.
Yesterday Kadyrov, a close ally of Putin, welcomed the decision to end anti-terrorist operations.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“We are extremely satisfied. The modern Chechen republic is a peaceful and budding territory ... The end of the counter-terrorist operation will spur on economic growth in the republic,” he told the Russian news agency Interfax.
But Moscow’s decision to draw a line under the Chechnya campaigns raised questions about what the Kremlin had actually achieved. Critics pointed out that under Kadyrov’s heavy-handed rule, Chechnya — while formally still a part of Russia — now enjoys the kind of autonomy that its separatist leaders in the 1990s could only have dreamed of.
“Most of the Chechen leadership and the heads of the local administration are ex-rebels. Chechnya is practically independent,” said former Russian army major Vyacheslav Izmailov, who fought in Chechnya. “Why was it [necessary] to start a war? Why was it necessary to kill tens of thousands of innocent people? A lot of my boys died in Chechnya. It seems they died for nothing.”
The move also raises troubling questions about the growing autonomy enjoyed by Kadyrov, who inherited the job after his president father, Akhmad, was assassinated up in 2004. Kadyrov has been granted sweeping powers and autonomy denied to other Russian republics in return for abandoning his struggle for independence. In return, Moscow also agreed to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses.
But recently some inside the Kremlin are beginning to wonder whether Putin’s policy of entrusting power to Chechens — known as “Chechenization” — has gone too far. It has been suggested that people close to Kadyrov have been linked to killings. The Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead, had described him as a “coward armed to the teeth.”
In January, Chechen exile Umar Israilov, who had accused Kadryov of torturing him, was shot dead in the street in Vienna. Last month, Sulim Yamadayev, a former Chechen rebel commander who fell out with Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai. Police in Dubai have accused Kadyrov’s cousin and likely successor, Adam Delimkhanov, of ordering the assassination. He has denied any involvement.
“It would be difficult to describe Chechnya as peaceful. But Kadyrov has achieved ‘stability’ in the Russian and Chechen definition of the word,” Sergei Markedonov of Moscow’s Institute for Political and Military Studies wrote on Thursday in the Moscow Times.
“Nonetheless this stability has come at a very high price. The flip side is that Chechnya’s internal political issues are largely resolved without Russia and with minimal adherence to federal laws,” Markedonov wrote.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing