PSCRP-BESA Reports No 82 (Sept 13, 2024)
The Russian Federation is a federation in name only. This goes without saying, but it would be appropriate to cite a few facts supporting this assertion. At the initiative of President Vladimir Putin, in December 2004, the Russian Federation adopted a law abolishing the direct election of regional governors. Since then, their candidacies were proposed by Vladimir Putin and formally approved by the legislative bodies of the respective “entities”. In April 2013, during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, similar legislative amendments were introduced for “ethnic constituent entities of the federation,” primarily republics. In July 2018, at the initiative of returning President Vladimir Putin, federal legislation was amended to abolish the compulsory study of local languages that are nominally “state” languages in “ethnic constituent entities of the federation”. At the beginning of 2020, yet again at the initiative of Vladimir Putin, an amendment was made to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, according to which “The Russian language shall be the State language on the entire territory of the Russian Federation as the language of the state-forming nation”. Thus, the fact that the Russian Federation sees itself not as a federation of peoples and regions, but as a unitary Russian nation-state was put into law.
It is not to say that all these changes were adopted locally without any protests at all. Suffice it to mention the mass public protests in Khabarovsk Krai in 2020 in response to the dismissal of Governor Sergei Furgal due to “loss of presidential trust” and his replacement by Moscow protégé Mikhail Degtyarev. On the whole, however, the resistance to the measures that nullified the agency of the “constituent entities of the federation” was very minor. The heads of Russian regions became almost nameless and entirely subordinate to Moscow.
The heads of “ethnic subjects of federation” also have almost zero agency. Most of these officials built their political careers outside the respective “constituent entities of the federation”, and in many cases they are not connected at all with the ethnic autonomies they head. Only seven of them meet the minimum criteria of local patriotism – a local native, belonging to the titular ethnicity and having built his career in the relevant ethno-territorial autonomy. These are the heads of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, Tatarstan, Tuva, Sakha, and Chuvashia. In all of them local languages and traditions are well preserved, there are fairly strong national movements, and only in one of them (Adygea) Russians constitute the majority.
But even these ethno-territorial autonomies, in fact, are currently deprived of agency. The only exception is the Chechen Republic headed by Ramzan Kadyrov, whose name is widely known not only in the Russian Federation, but also far beyond its borders. It carries out its own policy and deals with the federal center on an equal footing.
The background to this unique situation is as follows. In July 1991, after the failure of the GKChP coup, which was supported in particular by the leadership of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, the independence of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was proclaimed, with Dzhokhar Dudaev, a major general in the USSR Air Force and a participant of the Afghan war, as its first president. The central authorities of the Russian Federation, led by then President Boris Yeltsin, refused to recognize Ichkeria’s independence, but in June 1992 the Russians withdrew their troops from Ichkeria, leaving almost all heavy weapons behind. At the same time, the central authorities tried to eliminate the separatist regime of Dzhokhar Dudaev by the hands of the armed Chechen opposition they supported, but they failed.
November 30, 1994 marked the beginning of the First Chechen War. In April 1996, Russian special services assassinated Ichkerian President Dzhokhar Dudaev. By that time Russian troops had managed to occupy the republic’s flatlands. However, the Russian troops could not crush the resistance of Chechen separatist militias completely. The war ended with a ceasefire agreement signed on August 31, 1996 in the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt, according to which Russian troops were withdrawn from Chechnya, while the question of the status of the republic, which had declared independence from Russia, remained open. On May 12, 1997, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Aslan Maskhadov, the elected president of Ichkeria, signed in Moscow the “Treaty on Peace and Principles of Relations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”, by which Russia de facto recognized the independence of Ichkeria.
The extremely difficult economic situation in Chechnya led to the strengthening of Islamist radicals who sought to overthrow President Aslan Maskhadov and turn Chechnya into a springboard for jihad in the surrounding territories. This provoked the outbreak of the Second Chechen War in September 1999. In the spring of 2000, the organized resistance of the armed forces of Ichkeria was smashed, and the separatists (as well as Islamist militants) turned to guerrilla warfare tactics. Under these conditions, President Vladimir Putin, who came to power in the Russian Federation, decided to partially withdraw Russian troops from Chechnya and hand over power in the republic (that was returned to the Russian Federation) to the former mufti of Ichkeria, Akhmat Kadyrov, who had defected to the Russians in 2000. Thus, the foundations were laid for the unique relationship between Chechnya and the federal government that exists today. On May 9, 2004, Akhmat Kadyrov, then president of the Chechen Republic within the Russian Federation, was killed by Chechen separatists who were still continuing to fight. He was succeeded by his son Ramzan Kadyrov, who remains in power to this day.
Today’s Chechnya is a mono-ethnic region. According to 2021 data, 96.42% of its 1,510,824 inhabitants are Chechens. Russians, who comprised 24.8% of the population in 1989, right before the collapse of the USSR, are now only 1.21%. The overwhelming majority of Russians fled Chechnya during the years of independence and wars or died. The decline in the number of Russians in Chechnya continued even after the establishment of the Kadyrov regime (since 2002 their number has more than halved), which is primarily due to the predominance of old people among the remaining Russians in the republic. The third largest ethnic group in Chechnya are the Kumyks, who traditionally live in some of the villages of the Gudermes and Grozny districts of Chechnya — 12,184 people (0.81%) according to 2021 data.
Despite the mono-ethnicity of the Chechen population and the possibility to carry out an internal policy independently of the federal government, Russian is the language of instruction in all schools in the republic, and Chechen language and literature are taught as subjects. Moreover, judging by available publications, the linguistic competence of Chechen youth in their ethnic language tends to decline. Ramzan Kadyrov has repeatedly asserted that the Chechen language is under threat, and therefore “We must use every opportunity to preserve the language and provide it with development. The mother tongue must also become the main language of communication in families… Otherwise we will completely lose our most valuable asset – the language and culture of our people”. He even threatened to fire his close associates whose children did not speak Chechen.
Until 2009, Chechnya lived under a “counter-terrorism operation” mode, i.e., guerrilla operations by armed supporters of independence and radical Islamists continued with a fairly high intensity. As a result, the republic’s economy fell into complete decay. According to official data of 2010, the first place in the structure of its economy was occupied by “trade” (23% of gross product). This was followed by “public administration and security” (20.8%) and “construction” (14.1%), i.e., primarily the reconstruction of what was destroyed during the hostilities, accompanied by large-scale embezzlement of budget funds by the local collaborationist political elite. Agriculture and forestry accounted for 10%, extractive industry 2.7%, and manufacturing only 2%. The situation has improved somewhat since then, but unemployment in Chechnya is still high, and employment in the security services and criminal activities (which often overlap) are the most reliable sources of income for the population.
Against this background, a unique political and economic system has emerged in present-day Chechnya, in which the Kadyrov clan acts as a contractor for the federal government, guaranteeing the suppression of armed resistance by supporters of independence and radical Islamists in Chechnya itself and in neighboring ethno-territorial autonomies. Chechnya receives enormous subsidies from the federal budget and has its own armed forces, something that no other constituent entity of the federation can boast of. The armed forces of Chechnya, unofficially called “Kadyrovtsy”(“Kadyrovites”), are now mostly part of the Rosgvardia. They include such units as the 141st special motorized regiment named after A.A. Kadyrov, which acts as Ramzan Kadyrov’s personal guard; the 249th separate special motorized battalion “South”, the riot police unit “Akhmat-Grozny”, the SWAT unit “Akhmat” and others. The A.A. Kadyrov special police regiment belongs to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation includes the 78th motorized special-purpose regiment “North-Akhmat” and battalions “South-Akhmat”, “East-Akhmat” and “West-Akhmat”, formed in 2022.
There is virtually no conscription of Chechens for military service in non-Chechen units of the Russian Armed Forces. In the course of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, despite the powerful PR of Chechen units, it became obvious that they were not too effective and avoided direct combat with regular Ukrainian troops. Moreover, the Chechen authorities are trying their best not to send these units to the front, but to keep them for themselves. In order to fill the quotas for conscription to the front, the Chechen authorities widely practice the recruitment of contractors of non-Chechen origin from all over the Russian Federation to formally “Chechen” units. The Russian Special Forces University in Grozny is used for this purpose.
At the same time, the “Kadyrovites” are certainly very effective for intimidating Russian citizens and suppressing peaceful protests inside the country, and Putin needs them in exactly this capacity. They are also good for resolving territorial disputes with neighboring “constituent entities of the federation” in Chechnya’s favor. In this sense, Chechnya’s imposition on the Republic of Ingushetia of an agreement to revise the borders between them is very telling. One can also mention the use of Chechen units of the Rosgvardia to “settle” a territorial dispute between Chechnya and Dagestan near Kizlyar.
Any real loyalty of the “Kadyrovites” to the federal Russian authorities is absolutely non-existent. The illusion of such loyalty remains as long as Ramzan Kadyrov continues to insist that he is “Putin’s infantryman”, i.e., as long as the alliance between the two politicians persists, which provides for non-interference by the federal authorities in Chechnya’s internal politics and increased subsidies to its budget from the federal budget. After the collapse of this alliance for one reason or another and the weakening of Ramzan Kadyrov and his clan, the “Kadyrovites” can be used by them in an almost inevitable internal conflict in Chechnya.
The use of the armed forces at the disposal of the Chechen elite in external conflicts – primarily against the Russian Armed Forces in the event of the outbreak of the Third Chechen War – seems highly probable. At this stage it is impossible to predict who will lead the Chechens in this war – some new modification of the current Kadyrov regime, or the leaders of the opposition who are currently abroad. The full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine has led, among other things, to the revitalization of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria as a factor in Chechen and international politics. Several Chechen units are fighting on the side of Ukraine, including the Separate Special Purpose Battalion of the Ministry of Defense of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, established in 2022. It should be mentioned that Ukraine has officially recognized Chechnya as a country occupied by Russia. Akhmed Zakayev, Prime Minister of the government of Ichkeria in exile, openly declares that Chechen military units that have been formed on the territory of Ukraine and have acquired combat experience will be used to restore Chechnya’s independence. At the same time, he is sure that some of the “Kadyrovites” may join them.