Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty takes the time to pick apart the words of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov – the consistencies and contradictions reveal, well, a frightening and important reality.

Many aspects of Kadyrov’s interpretation of the
events of the past 15-20 years in Chechnya are open to question. He has
emphatically denied (in an April 2009 interview with “Rossiiskaya
gazeta”) ever having fought on the side of the resistance during the
1994-96 war. At the same time, he has admitted having as a boy regarded
ChRI President Djokhar Dudayev as “a national hero.”

In a
statement in December 2006 to mark the 12th anniversary of the Russian
attack on Chechnya, Kadyrov blamed the onset of the war on “the
shortsighted and irresponsible policies of the political leadership of
both Russia and Chechnya at that time.” But he now argues that both the
1994-96 war and that of 1999- 2000 were the result of a conspiracy by
“international terrorism” to weaken and dismember the Russian
Federation, and that Chechnya heroically “saved Russia” by taking on
itself the brunt of those attacks.

That simplistic
interpretation ignores the concerted efforts undertaken by the Russian
leadership in 1994 to undermine Dudayev, and the unanswered questions
surrounding the unimpeded incursions into Daghestan in August 1999 by
the radical Islamist wing of the Chechen leadership. The Russian
leadership adduced those attacks as justification for launching a new
war in Chechnya one month later.

As for the political
situation within Russia as a whole, Kadyrov deplored in his January
2009 interview with Regnum what he termed general moral degradation and
an erosion of patriotism that, he claimed, together pose a potential
threat to national security. He argued that “if someone does not love
his people, his religion, his homeland, he will never serve properly in
the armed forces…a strong state needs strong soldiers.”

Kadyrov
went on to warn of the threat posed by Russian nationalism, affirming
that “there should be no nationalists in Russia, which is a
multi-national state. If I were leader of the country, I would propose
a draft law to the State Duma that would designate nationalists
terrorists.”

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