Category Archives: Ramzan Kadyrov

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov shows off workout amid health rumours

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Independent Russian media outlet claims strongman was diagnosed with pancreatic necrosis in 2019

Chechnya’s strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has published a workout video in an apparent move to scotch rumours of illness after a media report claimed that his health was rapidly deteriorating.

Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent Russian outlet, published a report on Monday that said Kadyrov was diagnosed with pancreatic necrosis in 2019, a severe condition characterised by the death of pancreatic tissue.

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Chechnya bans dance music that is either too fast or too slow

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Ruling means music in Russian republic must ‘conform to Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm’

The Russian republic of Chechnya has banned dance music it deems either too fast or too slow, in an attempt to quash a “polluting” western influence on the conservative majority-Muslim region.

Musa Dadayev, the culture minister, said “all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80-116 beats per minute” to make music “conform to the Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm”, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

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‘A gift to Moscow’: dismay as NYPD takes part in UAE Swat games with Chechnya and Belarus

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Event has already been widely used as PR opportunity for notorious Chechen unit accused of war crimes in Ukraine

Led out by a beaming Adam Kadyrov, the son of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, a group of muscular men sporting black beards strode on to the brightly illuminated stage in Dubai last week to receive gold medals and a $5,000 (£3,960) cheque.

The men were members of the notorious Chechen Akhmat Kadyrov special police regiment, a group that Ukrainian officials have said was responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the war with Russia. The unit had just won one of the contests at the international Swat Challenge games, which are held each year in the United Arab Emirates.

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Chechen warlord applauds teenage son’s violence as he grooms dynasty for power

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Amid rumours of ill health, Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov is said to be lining up his children as successors

Many dictators try to cover up their children’s crimes. For Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen warlord, broadcasting his son’s violent behaviour may be a strategy for holding on to power.

In September, Kadyrov reposted a video on the Telegram social network showing Adam, his then 15-year-old son, launching a flurry of kicks and punches to the head of a Russian prisoner who had been transferred to Chechnya after being accused of burning a Qur’an.

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Humiliation for Vladimir Putin as Ukrainians liberate key city of Lyman

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Military defeat in Donetsk comes hours after Moscow declared that the region was Russian territory ‘for ever’

Russia suffered a humiliating military defeat on Saturday when Ukrainian troops liberated the key eastern city of Lyman, with videos showing them raising a blue and yellow national flag and performing a victory dance.

In a severe embarrassment for Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ministry of defence admitted its soldiers had retreated. They had been “withdrawn to more advantageous lines”, the ministry said, following their encirclement by Ukrainian forces.

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Putin promotes Chechen leader with ties to murder of Kremlin critic

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Ramzan Kadyrov promoted to lieutenant-general for his role in invasion of Ukraine

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has promoted Ramzan Kadyrov to lieutenant-general for his role in the invasion of Ukraine, which the Chechen leader is using to showcase his loyalty to Moscow and his own impunity.

This week Kadyrov claimed that a key ally linked to the 2015 murder of the Russian opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov, was injured fighting in the besieged port city of Mariupol.

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How public ‘apologies’ are used against domestic abuse victims in Chechnya

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Activists say Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime uses televised confessions ‘under duress’ to hold back women’s rights, despite changes in society

Khalimat Taramova, the 22-year-old daughter of a prominent Chechen businessman, sits demurely on a velvet sofa ornately embellished in gold. She is wearing a modest dress and a headscarf. With her on the sofa are three men dressed in suits. They are appearing on Grozny TV, the state television channel of Russia’s Chechen Republic.

Only a couple of weeks before the programme was shown on 14 June, Taramova fled her home, where she said she was subjected to violence after going against her family’s wishes. She sought help from a group of women’s rights activists, the Marem project , who let her stay in a flat owned by one of its members in the neighbouring republic of Dagestan. In a video released on social media on 6 June, she pleaded for the Chechen authorities not to come looking for her.

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Belarus regime uses video confessions as a tool to silence dissent

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Analysis: Raman Pratasevich and Sofia Sapega are just the latest to be forced into the widespread tactic

The videos are formulaic: Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, each sit alone in front of a camera in a police station and deliver their “confessions” as though a loaded gun is pointed at their heads.

“I’m also the editor of the Telegram channel Black Book of Belarus that publishes personal information about employees of the interior ministry,” said Sapega, quickly repeating a memorised statement in a video released late on Tuesday that could lead to years in jail.

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Chechnya’s leader blames police failures for violence in Dijon

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Ramzan Kadyrov defends compatriots in France after an attack on Chechen teenager sparked unrest

Ramzan Kadyrov, the autocratic leader of Chechnya, has expressed support for compatriots involved in clashes in the French city of Dijon this month, saying they were protecting one of their own because police failed to act.

Kadyrov’s message came as French police carried out raids and made a number of arrests of Chechens after several nights of violence blamed on members of the Chechen community from last Friday to Monday, when the city was rocked by clashes and car burnings.

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Secret services thwarted plot to kill TV host who attacked Putin, Georgia says

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Chechen leader and Moscow deny sending hitman after journalist’s expletive-laden TV tirade

Georgia has thwarted a plot to assassinate a journalist who made an expletive-laden attack on Vladimir Putin on live television last year, the Georgian prime minister said.

“Georgian secret services have foiled a very serious crime,” Giorgi Gakharia told journalists on Tuesday.

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Chechen blogger escapes apparent assassination bid in Poland

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Tumso Abdurakhmanov is the latest victim of a murder attempt after similar attacks on exiled dissidents

A well-known Chechen blogger has survived an apparent assassination attempt in Poland, in the latest of a series of attacks on dissidents exiled in Europe.

Tumso Abdurakhmanov posted a video showing him disheveled and breathing hard, standing over the bloodied body of another man. “Who sent you? Where have you come from?” Abdurakhmanov asks, before producing a hammer, which he says was used by the man in an attempted murder.

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Outspoken Chechen blogger found murdered in Lille

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Imran Aliev, who had criticised Chechnya’s leader, was stabbed repeatedly in a hotel room

An outspoken blogger from Chechnya who had criticised the country’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov has been found brutally murdered in France, several of his acquaintances have said, in the latest killing of a Chechen dissident in Europe.

Imran Aliev, 44, was found dead late last week in a hotel room in the city of Lille. He had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Accounts of Aliev’s murder were confirmed by a Chechen opposition journalist who knew Aliev, and by one other Chechen living in Europe who asked not to be named because of concerns for his safety.

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Chechnya verdict could mark new purge of human rights activists

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Lawyers and colleagues say case against Oyub Titiev was fabricated to punish him for his work

A court in Chechnya will deliver a verdict in the trial of a prominent human rights worker on Monday that could mark a new purge of activists from the Russian republic.

Oyub Titiev, the local head of the human rights organisation Memorial, has been accused of marijuana possession, as part of a case that his lawyers say was fabricated to punish him for his work documenting human rights abuses. The prosecution has asked for a sentence of four years in prison.

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Chechnya: two dead and dozens held in LGBT purge, say activists

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Accounts echo those from 2017, when hundreds of men were rounded up and beaten

Two people have been killed and nearly 40 detained in a new crackdown on LGBT people in Russia’s Chechnya region, activists have said. The deaths were reportedly caused by the use of torture by police.

The reports on Monday echo those from 2017, when hundreds of gay men were rounded up by police in Chechnya and subjected to beatings and electric shocks in secret prisons, provoking international condemnation and sanctions.

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