The now pro-Kremlin Chechen Republic has become a state within a state, exporting brutality and silencing critics of both Kadyrov's and Putin's regimes.
The Kadyrov family has been able to successfully muster a private army of what local authorities claim to be 70,000 Chechen fighters loyal to the warlord. Chechen militants and police officers have been abducting, torturing, and murdering activists, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and those suspected of disloyalty to the regime.
In exchange for maintaining peace in Chechnya, Kadyrov has been given free rein far beyond the borders of his tiny republic, reportedly carrying out extrajudicial killings in Grozny, Moscow, and Berlin.
Yer İmleri