Paul Goble
Staunton, April 4 – The conflict between the FSB and
Ramzan Kadyrov over who is to be held responsible for the murder of Boris
Nemtsov is intensifying and increasingly affects Vladimir Putin, Andrey
Piontkovsky says, because “any attack on Kadyrov indirectly or directly is an
attack” on the Kremlin leader. At a minimum, it calls attention to his weakened
position.
Many analysts had concluded, after Putin returned from
his “unexpected disappearance” from public view, that the FSB and the Chechen
leader had somehow agreed on a “compromise” in which the Chechen Dadayev would
take the fall and everyone would agree that he acted alone and from Islamic
motives (gordonua.com/news/politics/Piontkovskiy-Obostryaetsya-konflikt-mezhdu-FSB-i-Kadyrovym-vnutri-Kremlya-na-temu-Kogo-naznachit-ubiycey-Nemcova-74279.html).
But, Piontkovsky says, “the FSB had continued
the pressure” on Kadyrov. “From those leaks which are appearing in the press
from the FSB, it is clear that [the leaders of the security service] are
demanding that more senior people around Kadyrov such as Germeyev and
Delimkhanov be brought to justice or at a minimum questioned.”
And at the same time, the
Russian analyst continues, “the Kadyrov camp has launched a counter-attack,”
with Dadayev disowning his confessions and insisting that he “has no
relationship to the murder” and made his earlier statements as a result of
torture.
“Such a scandalous dead
end on the question of naming the murderer of Nemsov is obvious and testifies
to the fact that the power of the dictator has weakened. A dictator fully in
charge would never allow such a conflict in his entourage or such a challenge
to himself,” Piontkovsky continues. But “when and how the conflict will end” is
beyond the power of anyone now to predict.
“But it must end
somehow,” he suggests, “because the situation is becoming ever more scandalous:
someone must be named as the murder of Nemtsov. Any real dictator be he Putin
in full control undoubtedly would remove the entire leadership of the FSB as a
result of this challenge to hiself. But apparently he cannot do that.”
Piontkovsky is
absolutely right to suggest that the conflict between the FSB and the Chechen
leader must end sometime, and he is right also to indicate that the longer it
continues, the more it becomes a problem for Putin. But there are two possibilities about how
this might “end” that the Russian analyst does not consider in his Gordonua.com
interview.
On the one hand, in the
new media environment in which all the players including Putin, the onrushing
flood of events is so great that it is possible that Nemtsov’s murder however
much it riled the Moscow political landscape at the time is going to fade as an
issue. Everyone will remember it, and all sides will continue to believe in
their versions of the truth, but it will be less central for each of them.
And on the other, like
other dictators before him, Putin may use conflicts among his subordinates, in
this case between the FSB and the Chechens to his own advantage, using the
attacks on each to weaken the other and thus boost his own standing. Only if the FSB or Kadyrov goes public with
the suggestion that Putin was directly involved would the Kremlin leader have
to take action.
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