Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 11 – Ramzan Kadyrov
has said he is prepared to give his life for Vladimir Putin, but the larger and
more immediate question now, Oleg Kashin argues, is ‘where is the guarantee
that Kadyrov’s men will not kill” the Russian president or others in his
entourage so that the ambitious Chechen leader can rise further?
Indeed, the Moscow blogger suggests,
Kadyrov is now like Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s murderous secret police
chief. “While he headed the NKVD,
everyone [in the Soviet leadership] had to put up with him, but as soon as
Beria tried to become something more [after the death of Stalin], the most
ardent enemies united and destroyed” him (http://www.szona.org/gde-garantiya-chto-kadyrovtsy-ne-ubyut-putina/ and
gordonua.com/news/society/Kashin-YA-dopuskayu-chto-siloviki-pozvolili-ubit-Nemcova-chtoby-sozdat-povod-dlya-nakazaniya-lyudey-Kadyrova-70601.html).
And
a similar kind of power struggle has come into public view in the wake of the
murder of Boris Nemtsov between Kadyrov and the heads of the siloviki and
security agencies, a struggle which puts Putin himself in a difficult position
of having to make a choice between them even though at least so far he has the
last word, Kashin says.
This has become clear as a result of
some in Moscow to place all the blame for Nemtsov’s murder on the Chechens, an
action that led Kadyrov to come out in their defense and that led Putin to defend
Kadyrov by decorating him and to criticize his own law enforcement bodies for
allowing the murder to happen, calling it “a shame” on them.
It is noteworthy, Kashin points out,
that the report of the detention of the Chechens was made not by the head of the Investigative Committee
but by Aleksandr Bortnikov, the director of the FSB. “Portnikov says: ‘[Zaur] Dadayev is a murderer,’”
and “Kadyrov replies, ‘Dadayev is a real patriot and a brave fighter.”
Such public disagreement among
senior Russian officials is “not very common” and is certainly not something
that Putin wants to see, especially since, as Kashin points out, “from the
point of view of apparat logic, the only person who can” make a judgment
between them is the Kremlin leader himself.
Putin may have hoped to defuse the
situation by allowing the arrests to stand but honoring Kadryov, Kashin
continues, but even if this is a correct reading of what has happened, it is
impossible to consider that this dispute is really over or that the threat to
Kadyrov from Moscow has passed.
On the one hand, Putin “cannot fail
to reflect that if the Kadyrov en killed Nemtsov,” there is “no guarantee” that
the next time they will not “kill someone else or even Putin himself.” And on the other, the Russian security
services which have long had no love for Kadyrov’s independent-mindedness may
have the same fears and feel the need to take action.
And they may have an additional
reason for doing so: Putin’s honoring of Kadyrov in these circumstances
suggests that the Chechen leader “is already stronger than the Kremlin and its
special services.” That could push Putin into their camp because he is not
willing to acknowledge this, given that he sees himself as “a great historical
figure.”
Although Putin is still very much in
office, all of this creates a situation that recalls that of the period just
before and just after the death of Stalin, a time when the various forces in
the Soviet leadership came together to get rid of and ultimately kill Beria
lest he take power and kill them.
Given Putin’s personal style, this
fight may continue for some time, but now it is out in the open, and that by
its very nature changes the nature of the game, making it more fateful for
Russia and perhaps more fatal for some of the participants in it.
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