In light of this past Friday’s Russian March, noted political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky examines the growing Russian nationalist movement and its origins in the Second Chechen War and ongoing conflicts in the North Caucasus.

The Russian March to Nothingness
By Andrei Piontkovsky
November 3, 2011
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

In a country where the political regime is made up of a longtime diarchy of bandits, Putin and Kadyrov, the popular slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus” cannot be seen as something nationalistic or patriotic. Regardless of all its apparent radicalism, it is a deeply ingratiating, slavish, plebeian exhortation.

It means “we want to feed all of our own crooks and thieves: Putin and Abramovich, Sechin and Chemezov, Medvedev and Fridman, Deripaska and Timchenko, the Rotenburg brothers and the Kovalchuk brothers.

It means “we want to return Kadyrov’s criminal offshore accounts here to Putin’s domestic “lawful” arena, even if it requires an third, even bloodier, Chechen war.”

“We want an empire, but without black-assed people” – this is the fatal contradiction of the Russian national consciousness, decisively entangled in its own complexes.

Russians do indeed feel humiliated, offended, and robbed within their own country. As do Russian citizens of other nationalities.

Kadyrov’s palaces, motorcades and parties with Western and Russian superstar-prostitutes of both genders that cost millions in budget money are just as disgusting as the even more extravagant bells and whistles of Mr. Botox. But they have the same attitude towards the “feeding” of the overwhelming majority of North Caucasians as Abramovich’s yachts have towards ocean cruises for participants of the Russian March.

Russian laws definitely don’t operate in Chechnya. But does anybody really still believe that they operate in Russia?

The problem of the North Caucasus is much deeper and more catastrophic than the ratio of the amount of budget transfers to different regions.

What’s going on in the North Caucasus is increasingly surpassing the bounds of a serious regional conflict and is turning into a central existential problem for the Russian Federation. All of the mistakes, failures, and crimes of Russia’s post-communist government in the realms of security, economics, national policy, and federative organization have become entwined in the Caucasus.

Why did we fight two wars in Chechnya? For Russia’s territorial integrity. But territorial integrity does not imply scorched, unpopulated earth. We fought to prove to the Chechens that they are citizens of Russia. But we simultaneously destroyed their towns and villages with planes and salvo rocket systems (and the “Grad” system in open fields, with Putin and Stalingrad behind us) and kidnapped innocent people whose corpses were later found bearing signs of torture.

We have constantly proved to the Chechens the very opposite of what we proclaimed – we proved to them with all of our behavior that they are not citizens of Russia and that we have not considered them to be citizens of Russia for a long time already – but their towns and villages are Russian. And we proved this convincingly not only to the Chechens, but to everyone in the Caucasus. They were good at memorizing the visual lessons we taught them.

And this is the fundamental, tragic absurdity of the war that determined its inevitable result.

We lost the war against the Chechen separatists. One of the most brutal field commanders, Ramzan Kadyrov, won. He has such a degree of independence from the Kremlin that even the Soviet officers Dudayev and Maskhadov would never even dream of.

Having had to choose between the very bad and the monstrous as a result of his pre-election policies, Putin, I have to give him credit, chose the very bad. Admitting his defeat, he gave all the power in Chechnya to Kadyrov and his army and paid him compensation. In response, Kadyrov formally declared not so much loyalty to the Kremlin as his own personal union with Putin. The monstrous choice would have been to continue the war to the point of total destruction – in the spirit of Shamanov and Budanov.

Ms. Latynina, with her poetic nostalgia for the romantic times of the Circassian genocide, clearly sees this choice as a shameful rejection of the white man’s burden and a cowardly capitulation before the liberal-leftist dictatorship of multiculturalism. Oh, how wonderfully those shining Russian aristocrat officers butchered the natives back then, and even wrote in their journals – the Yezhednevny Zhurnals of the time – such intoxicating lines: “I f… and cry!”

War on Chechen separatism in the North Caucasus has been replaced by a different war, one generated by the first – the war on Islamic fundamentalism.

Over that time , Islamic terrorism has crept over the entire North Caucasus, where its number of followers has grown and the structures of its Jamaats have strengthened. And just like during the Chechen wars, we are increasing the number of Islamists with our policies. Take, for example, the rhetoric of our (at least for the time being) supreme commander, who is apparently experiencing a certain syndrome of a lack of brutality compared to Uncle Volodya. The entirety of his reaction to the terrorist attacks on Russian territory consists of uninterrupted calls to “utterly destroy” and punish everyone, even “those who do laundry and cook soup for the terrorists.”

Knowing the moral integrity of the counter-terrorism soldiers from Khanty-Mansiysk, sent off to the Caucasus as if on a temporary work assignment, Mr. Badminton, or at least his groomers, can’t be unaware that the only result of these calls is going to be a marked rise in the number of extrajudicial murders of people who are in no way involved with militants and reprisals against relatives of suspected terrorists. And this, in turn, increases the number suicide bombers and leads to new terrorist attacks on Russian territory.

This is the twelfth year we’ve been fighting this war without understanding the scale of ongoing tragedy – the entire country is sliding into a civil conflict between nationalities – which the government’s policies are entirely responsible for creating, having long burned this wick from both ends.

In the Caucasus, having unleashed and lost the war, the Kremlin is paying compensation in exchange for a sham submissiveness not only to Kadyrov, but to criminal elites in all other republics. This is used to purchase palaces and the golden pistols that dangle off the rumps of local leaders. But the young, unemployed residents who have lost touch with their communities take off to join in Allah’s wars or are squeezed out of the Caucasus onto the streets of Russian cities.

But that is where a generation of children whose parents have utterly and forever lost out because of the failed economic reforms of the past twenty years has already grown up.

Televised cultural rulers and other masterminds have explained to them that all of their problems have been caused by “uncles in pith helmets” and “non-indigenous criminal gangs” who want to break them apart. Gangs of teenagers from working-class backgrounds who have been deprived of their future have a hard time getting to “uncles in pith helmets” or the heavenly residents of Rublevka, and so they unleash their accumulated fury by beating to death “persons of a non-indigenous skin color.”

And today the two armies of desperados, deceived and robbed by, as it were, the exact same people, have been thrown at one another.

Mentally, there is a growing gap between Russian and Caucasian youths, who have grown up in the midst of a brutal war, first Chechen, and then Caucasian in general.

Young Muscovites march around the city with cries of “f… the Caucasus! F…!” and the young mountain youths walk around the streets of Russian cities in a demonstrably defiant and aggressive fashion. They have developed the psychology of the victors. In their minds, Moscow has lost the Caucasian war.

In mind and in spirit, the Caucasus and Russia are vastly separate entities. Although neither the Kremlin nor the North Caucasian “elites” are prepared to make a formal separation.

The Kremlin is still living with its phantom imperial illusions of wide zones of privileged interests that lie far beyond Russia’s borders, and local leaders, starting with Kadyrov, don’t want to turn down the transfers from Russia’s budget.

The Islamists don’t want to separate, either. They have dreams of a caliphate that includes quite a large part of the Russian Federation.

A situation so humiliating for Russia cannot go on forever.

But there is no easy way out. In today’s political system, with this government, there is no way out in general.

An attempt to put an end to Putin’s “Kadyrov project” by force, as is openly advocated by the professional Russian – poor Zhirinovsky – and therefore by default the majority of demagogues in the Russian March, would mean a full-scale third Chechen war that would become a military, political, and moral catastrophe for Russia. Even those who hate Kadyrov and the Chechens who suffer because of him, and moreover his personal army, would never agree to submissively return to the times of the total tyranny of the federations. To make the same mistakes three times in a row would be total lunacy. Even Putin, the most obstinate about the Chechen issue, understands that.

But that wouldn’t stop the “party of blood,” which hasn’t managed to come to terms with the loss of Chechnya as a zone to feed off of and, perhaps more importantly, as a zone to exercise its drunken power over the lives and deaths of any of its inhabitants. The Kadyrov project has stripped many federal siloviki of these two basic pleasures, having made them exclusive to Kadyrov, and they are genuinely hateful because of this.

They say the price of their support is possible allies in the clannish, inter-Kremlin dismantlement – Kadyrov.

The siloviki who have an infernal desire to work again in Chechnya, of course, are mentally closer to Putin and his gang than to anyone else. But they understand perfectly well that Putin will never purge Kadyrov.

Putting an end to the Kadyrov project would be an official admission of Russia’s defeat in the second Chechen war and the proclamation of a third. This would be a return to 1999 from a much worse starting point. It would mean the total political delegitimization of Putin as “the savior of the fatherland in 1999.”

Our best political publicists have equally convincingly and passionately explained to us that our children were burned in Beslan and the hostages suffocated in Nord-Ost for the sake of the greatness of Russia and the triumph of her geopolitical interests. And where now is this greatness or this triumph?

Putin will definitely become one of the first political victims of the third Chechen war. During all twelve years of his rule I have said repeatedly that the Putin regime is not compatible with the life of the country. But God forbid we escape from Putin at such a price. Moreover that it wouldn’t let us escape from Putinism and its roots.

In 1999, the most notorious Kremlin blackguards (their names are well-known) who lead Operation “Heir” entered into an alliance with siloviki who were thirsty for revenge and, after Basayev’s campaign to Dagestan and the apartment bombings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and the failed one in Ryazan, unleashed the second Chechen war in order to bring their own, as they thought at the time, obedient marionette to power. It is they who are they real murderers of Kungayeva, Budanov and the other tens of thousands of people, Chechen and Russian, who fell during their small triumphant war.

Speaking at a meeting dedicated to the work of law enforcement agencies in the North Caucasian Federal District, Prosecutor General Deputy Ivan Sydoruk said that the number of attacks in the region was up 100 percent in 2010.

The rise comes despite 30 counter-terrorism operations carried out in the North Caucasus in 2010, in which more than 300 militants, including 17 prominent leaders, were neutralized. In addition, police had confiscated 1,665 firearms, 91846 rounds of ammunition, more than 1200 kilograms of explosives and more than 110 explosive devices from weapons trafficking circles.

The admission by the prosecutor general’s office follows conflicting statements by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and leaders in Chechnya and Ingushetia over the success of counter-terrorism operations in the North Caucasus.

During a November 19 meeting on comprehensive measures to ensure stability in the volatile region, President Medvedev said that information presented to him indicating an improvement in the criminal situation was “nonsense.” “I have no faith in these statistics, they’re often nonsense,” said the president. He also said that the operative situation in the Caucasus “has practically not improved.”

In response, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov issued a joint statement saying that President Medvedev was incorrect.

“The president said that it was ‘nonsense.’ But it’s clear to us that that’s not the case,” said Yevkurov. In an interview with Interfax, Kadyrov said he could not rule out the possibility that militants had been eradicated from Chechnya altogether.

In his turn, Russian Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said last week that the number of terrorist threats in Russia remains high.

On Tuesday, Interfax reported that criminal charges of slander had been filed against the head of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, Oleg Orlov, by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. The charges stem from comments by Orlov regarding connections between Kadyrov and last summer’s high-profile murder of Memorial activist Natalya Estemirova.

The Chechen president, who has been denounced by rights organizations worldwide for his alleged personal involvement in individual cases of murder, torture, and other rights abuses, won an earlier civil case against Orlov in which the Memorial director was forced to pay a fine. Kadyrov then promised to stop suing human rights activists after he was criticized by his mother for disrespecting his elders. With Tuesday’s announcement, that promise appears to have been broken. Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe reports on the Russian federal government’s misunderstanding of human rights organizations:

Well-known Russian rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina says the federal government is ignorant about the operations of human rights groups in the North Caucasus, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.

Gannushkina, of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Civic Assistance Committee, was reacting to reports that a Moscow court has charged Oleg Orlov, the head of the rights group Memorial, with defamation of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

She told RFE/RL that “the dangerous part of human rights work comes from the local governments, not outside organizations.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a meeting human rights activists on July 6 that he believes people need to be able “to send the government a signal” about the problems in the North Caucasus, often by going through NGOs.

But Putin warned that some NGOs in the North Caucasus are “supported by outside funds,” hinting that they are being financed by political organizations abroad.

Gannushkina said such an accusation is not new. She added that activists do not follow orders from anyone, though she admitted that most of the funding for NGOs comes from foreign and private companies.

In a statement on Thursday to the Russian news agencies Interfax and RIA Novosti, law enforcement sources said that the murder had been solved and a killer had been identified. The killer has not, however, been detained, and a search is currently underway. Investigators, the sources said, are also still working to establish the identity of the person who ordered the murder.

Oleg Orlov of the Memorial human rights center, where Estemirova had worked, has already refuted the announcement. Speaking to Gazeta.ru, Orlov said that his colleagues at Memorial have spoken with representatives of the groups investigating Estemirova’s murder, and that these representatives denied that the announcement was true. “They said that they haven’t established the name of the murderer,” said Orlov.

While Gazeta.ru was able to obtain an unofficial confirmation from sources in the Chechen Investigative Committee that the culprit has been identified, all official sources proved to be unreachable on Thursday. The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General of Russia refrained from commenting, and the official representative of the Chechen Investigative Committee was out of the office and did not answer her cell phone throughout the course of the day. The newspaper was also unable to reach the press secretary of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who had promised to monitor the course of the murder investigation.

The 50-year-old Estemirova had been the lead member of Memorial’s office in the Chechen capital of Grozny, and had worked to investigate kidnappings and murders of people in Chechnya. She was kidnapped herself not far from her home in the capital on June 15 of last year, and was later found shot dead in the Nazranovsky district of Ingushetia.

Memorial, which soon after announced that it was shutting down operations in Chechnya, blamed Estemirova’s murder on President Kadyrov, claiming that the volatile situation in the republic was the president’s responsibility. Kadyrov successfully sued Orlov for slander, and a Moscow city court fined Orlov 70 thousand rubles (about $2300). In the beginning of February, after experiencing pressure from public officials and a particularly public dressing-down from his mother for failing to respect his elders, Kadyrov dropped all further suits against other human rights activists, including the prominent 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva.

The news of Estemirova’s murder had a powerful resonation throughout the world. In particular, United States President Barack Obama issued a statement calling on the Russian authorities to investigate the murder and punish those responsible. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said that he did not believe that Kadyrov had participated in the tragedy, and considered the murder to be an act of provocation against the government.

Kadyrov, however, gave several interviews after the murder in which he spoke out harshly against the slain activist. Defending himself on Radio Liberty and saying that he took no part in the killing, the Chechen president said that he “had no reason to kill a woman who nobody needed.” Referring to her place on a public council under the Grozny city administration, he added that “she has never had any honor, dignity, or a conscience, and all the same I named her as a council representative.” He also did admit that he had later dissolved the council.

When asked if he thought the murder would ever be solved, Orlov stated that the politics tied up in the Estemirova’s case made it hard to say. “In naming this or that person as having participated in the murder, or in naming the person who possibly ordered the murder, the investigators and prosecutors are invariably stepping into a type of political realm,” he told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.

Memorial member Aleksandr Cherkasov noted the 2002 murder investigation of an outspoken Chechen village leader, Malika Umazheva, as a cautionary tale. An official investigation blamed the killing on militants who it turned out had long been dead, and also on people who had only issued confessions under torture. Memorial’s own investigation established that Umazheva had been murdered by federal security forces, likely in retaliation for the leader’s fervent criticism of the ongoing Russian federal raids in her village.

According to the report, Isa Yamadayev says in the letter that his life is in danger, and he asks for personal support from the president. “One after another my brothers are killed. In 2003 militants killed Yamadayev Dzhabrail. In 2008 in Moscow they killed Ruslan Yamadayev; in the United Arab Emirates my brother Sulim Yamadayev was shot. Now the hunt is open for me,” he says.

Yamadayev refers in the letter to common speculation in the press that the Kremlin has given carte blanche to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, and therefore closes its eyes to the murders of political opponents in the region.

“Is it really so that now, without analysis, all opponents of Kadyrov are declared enemies of Russia and can be killed? Human rights advocate Natalya Estemirova of Memorial, killed in 2009, Movladi Atlangeriyev, kidnapped in Moscow in 2007, and then killed in Chechnya, the president of Konvers-Group Aleksandr Antonov and his anonymous guard, killed in Moscow in 2009. They are what, also enemies of Russia?” the letter asks.

Yamadayev says that he sees only one answer to this question: That President Medvedev is not informed of the true state of affairs concerning the investigation of these crimes.

At the end of his letter, Yamadayev expresses certainty that he will also be killed, and asks Medvedev “to stop this mad conveyer of death.”

The Yamadayev brothers were former allies of the Kadyrov family in Chechnya, but their relationship took a turn for the worse after the death of former President Akhmad Kadyrov in 2004. Relations between the clans spoiled altogether after a crash between the Kadyrov motorcade and a convoy driven by Badrudi Yamadayev.

Several months after the crash, Ruslan Yamadayev was shot and killed in Moscow. In March 2009, unknown persons shot Sulim Yamadayev; one of the suspects had close ties to President Ramzan Kadyrov. The Times newspaper in London cites Sulim’s killing as the sixth violent murder of Kadyrov opponent in a row. Isa Yamadayev had stated in May that he believed his life to be in danger.

The Kremlin-backed Kadyrov regime in Chechnya has recently come under fire for murdering members of opposition forces, a charge that both the Kadyrovs and the Kremlin deny. Nevertheless, the murdered Yamadayev brothers are among a number of other recently targeted opponents. Former Kadyrov bodyguard Umar Israilov was assassinated in Vienna after becoming a critic of the regime. Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the president of a breakaway Chechen republic, was killed in exile by Russian military intelligence in 2004.

“This step will continue to lead Chechnya out from Russia’s legal framework,” journalist and researcher Vladimir Voronin told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.  Voronin said the order was at once a populist measure, and a step that will allow Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov to maintain a large deal of freedom and independence from the federal center for Chechnya.

The counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya was initiated in September 1999, after a series of apartment bombings left hundreds dead in Moscow.  The Kremlin linked the bombings to Chechen terrorist groups.  Military operations had started earlier, in the summer of 1999, after a group of Chechen insurgents invaded the neighboring Republic of Dagestan.  Active combat continued until 2000, when a largely defeated insurgency turned to low-scale bombings and clashes.

In recent years, Ramzan Kadyrov has consolidated power in the Republic, using strict military control and a wash of federal money to help rebuild Chechnya.  Rights activists have alleged that Kadyrov’s regime has worked outside the law, using tactics including torture and kidnapping against perceived enemies.

Grigory S. Shvedov, the editor of the Web-based news service Caucasian Knot, told the New York Times that the on-the-ground situation in Chechnya remained tense.

“The number of bombings, terrorist attacks and murders as in the past remains high; they occur every week,” Shvedov said. “It is a fairytale that Chechnya has become a stable region.”

Yamadayev was a former Chechen rebel and warlord who switched over to the Russian side and went on to lead the “Vostok” (East) special military battalion.  He was widely believed to be a leading opponent of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who has consolidated power in the beleaguered North Caucasus republic in recent years.

According to Dubai police, Yamadayev was shot from behind in the underground parking area of a luxury residential building where he was staying, dying instantly.

Major General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told Reuters that, “the case is clear and there is no confusion over what happened. An organized criminal group was behind the assassination.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has fought two wars against separatists in Chechnya, a primarily Muslim region.  Many former rebel leaders, including Kadyrov and Yamadayev, eventually joined the Russian army, going on to become top leaders and decorated officers.  Although authorities have severely cracked down on militants, a low-level insurgency continues in the area, particularly in the neighboring Republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Yamadayev was one of a group of powerful brothers who made up the Yamadayev clan.  As Kadyrov pushed out opponents in Chechnya, the clan clashed with the president in a power struggle waged in the courts and the streets.  In April 2008, some of Yamadayev’s forces were involved in a shootout with Kadyrov’s men after a road collision, which by some estimates left 18 people dead.  After the incident, Kadyrov publicly accused Sulim Yamadayev in a series of crimes, calling for his arrest and prosecution.

In May 2008, Yamadayev was relieved as commander of the Vostok battalion.  Three criminal cases were also launched against the former warlord.

On September 24th 2008, one of Sulim’s brothers, former State Duma deputy Ruslan Yamadayev, was shot to death in Moscow.  At the time, the Kommersant newspaper reported that Sulim Yamadayev was trying to go underground, switching apartments repeatedly and surrounding himself with bodyguards.  No suspects have been apprehended in the shooting.

Yamadayev is the sixth Chechen who opposed Kadyrov to be murdered outside the republic in recent months.  Three more Chechen exiles have been shot to death in Istanbul, Turkey since September.  Another, Umar Israilov, had accused Kadyrov of torture before he was publicly assassinated in Austria in January.

Kadyrov has strongly denied involvement in any of the murders, describing them as an attempt to destabilize Chechnya and discredit him.  He called Sulim Yamadayev’s death “tragic.”

“I signed the order due to the fact that alcohol encourages the growth of criminality and immorality in society,” Kadyrov said.

The law makes Chechnya the most restrictive region in Russia for alcohol sales.  Kadyrov’s critics have said the president is turning the mostly Muslim region into a strict Islamic state.  Past orders include compelling women working in the government to wear headscarves and long skirts.

Mikhail Savchin, Chechnya’s public prosecutor, said the bill does not contradict standing Russian laws.

“According to federal law, federal subjects have the right to impose limitations on the time when alcoholic products containing ethyl alcohol of more than 15 percent may be sold,” Savchin said.  “The president’s order does not contradict the law, but we must take into account all the minuses which may arise from restricted sales of spirits.”

Savchin said the decree may lead to court cases against the government, as the public notes an effect on business and the local economy.  The public prosecutor said alcohol producers may lose business and that revenue may be lost as funds flow into neighboring regions with less restrictive laws.  The growth of illegal alcohol sales is also possible, he said.

Kadyrov dismissed criticism of the order, and said he had discussed the plusses and minuses of the edict with regional leadership, and that public opinion was on his side.  “I am convinced that there are far more plusses than minuses,” he said.

“Everything that brings harm to society must be eradicated, that is my belief,” Kadyrov told RIA Novosti.  “I am not against the outflow of cash into neighboring regions.  We will supplement our budget by other means, restoring agriculture, tourism, industry, sport.  We will produce high-quality cognac and wine so that those who drink will at least not damage their health.  Our mosques, gymnasiums and schools should be overflowing, not our alcohol stores.”

Umar Israilov, 27, a former Chechen rebel who later became a bodyguard to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, was chased down as he left a Vienna grocery store, and shot twice to the head, according to witness accounts. Israilov had obtained political asylum in Austria, and filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2006 over allegations of widespread torture and kidnappings on the part of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Several days before he was killed, Israilov approached police with a concern that he was being followed.

“Until the investigation is complete, we cannot say for certain that this was a contract killing,” said Oleg Orlov, a director of Russian human rights group Memorial.

“None the less, one gets the impression that the [murder] is connected with the fact that Israilov was a complainant to the European Court, and that he accused authorities and President Kadyrov personally. The intention is precisely to force victims to abandon their complaints,” he went on.

According to the New York Times newspaper, Israilov said in an interview that he was personally tortured by Kadyrov, and that he witnessed a number of abductions and torture perpetrated by Kadyrov and his men between 2003 and 2005. Kadyrov, who became president in February 2007, has led Chechnya with an iron fist, and has long been accused of human rights violations by observers.

In a separate case, the ECHR in Strasbourg compelled Russia to pay out 81 thousand euros ($106,000) over the disappearances of two Chechen men in 2002 and 2004. As the Ekho Moskvy radio station reports, citing Agence France-Presse, one of the men was arrested by Russian soldiers, while another was led away by armed men claiming to represent the Federal Security Service (FSB). Neither have been heard from since.

The court called for Russia to pay 35 thousand euros to each of the mens’ families, and 11 thousand euros in court fees. While the verdict does not find Russia guilty of the abductions, the ruling does say that Russia failed to investigate the cases sufficiently. The Strasbourg court also found that Russia violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights on torture and inhumane conduct, as well as the right to freedom and the right to life.

Both sides will have the right to appeal the verdict for a period of three months.

—

Read more about disappearances in Chechnya from Human Rights Watch.
Read more about Ramzan Kadyrov from the LA Times.

The Yamadayevs have been at odds with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, and preliminary conclusions do not preclude Kadyrov’s involvement in the murder.

Yamadayev, 47, was behind the wheel of a Mercedes S600. As he stopped at a red light, an unidentified attacker approached the vehicle and fired shots through the window, according to RIA Novosti reports. Yamadayev died on the spot, and his passenger, General-Colonel Sergei Kizyun, was heavily wounded. Investigators are searching for an Audi 80, which may have been used by the attacker to flee the scene.

According to Issa Yamadayev, Ruslan’s brother, he was returning from meeting in the presidential administration. The former lawmaker may have discussed problems being faced by the Vostok (“East”) battalion, a special forces unit he helped found within Chechnya.

A criminal investigation has been launched by the Interior Ministry.

Both Kadyrov and the Yamadayevs are former Chechen rebels, who fought against Russian troops for independence during the first Chechen war. They later switched sides, and joined together to bring Chechnya back into Russia’s fold. Ruslan and his younger brother Sulim Yamadayev, the former head of the Vostok battalion, were awarded Hero of Russia medals for their efforts against Chechen insurgents.

The Yamadayevs are widely believed to be the only force within Chechnya that operates outside of Ramzan Kadyrov’s oversight. Ruslan Yamadayev’s death may mark a final step to Kadyrov’s complete control of the embattled Caucasus republic.

In April of this year, soldiers in the Vostok battalion came head to head in an armed confrontation with Ramzan Kadyrov’s personal guard when they blocked passage for Kadyrov’s motorcade.

Since then, Kadyrov has intensified a legal and media assault on the battalion and the brothers, who have kept a low profile. Chechen law enforcement announced that Sulim and Badruddi, the youngest brother, were being sought for war crimes. Kadyrov announced on state television that the Yamadayevs were criminals, and called for their arrest. Sulim Yamadayev was subsequently rid of his position in the armed forces, after which Kadyrov called off the investigation against him.

According to a source quoted in Kommersant, Sulim Yamadayev had recently tried to go underground, switching apartments several times, and never leaving his home without stepped-up security. Ruslan, who never hired bodyguards, was always in the company of highly-ranked military personnel, and apparently believed this was a certain guarantee of safety.

Kommersant’s source noted that a special operation against Kadyrov’s enemies was started on September 17th, when Bislan Elimkhanov, the commander of the Zapad (“West”) battalion, was attacked in Grozny(Rus).

Russian lawmakers, meanwhile, tried to pin the blame on Georgia. Alexander Torshin, the First Vice Speaker of Russia’s upper house, the Federation Council, said the attackers wanted to kill Sulim Yamadayev. Sulim had led the Vostok battalion as it swept into the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali in late August.

Kadyrov, Torshin said, would be the last person interested in such a murder.