Chechnya in chaos as murdered president is mourned
Thousands of mourners flocked to Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov’s native village for his funeral today, a day after the Moscow-backed leader was killed by a bomb blast that cast Russia’s efforts to stabilise and control the war-ravaged region into chaos.
Hundreds of cars and buses crowded the streets of Tsentoroi, the settlement in southeastern Chechnya that is home to Kadyrov’s clan, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. Mourning ceremonies were to go on for three days.
Funerals were to be held elsewhere for other victims, including Khusein Isayev, the head of Chechnya’s State Council, and Reuters photographer Adlan Khasanov.
The blast ripped through a stadium grandstand in the Chechen capital Grozny during a Victory Day parade celebrating the anniversary of the Nazi defeat in the Second World War.
The Grozny emergency medical centre said 24 people in all were killed and 46 wounded.
Among the wounded was the top Russian military commander in Chechnya, Colonel-General Valery Baranov, who official said was in critical condition.
The explosive was believed to be a land mine, said Sergei Kozhemyaka, a spokesman for the southern Russian branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry. NTV television quoted an investigator as saying it had been made out of a 152-mm artillery shell and detonated with a wire or timer.
There was no claim of responsibility for the blast, but suspicion inevitably fell on Chechen rebels, who are fighting both Russian soldiers and Chechen police employed by the regional government and Kadyrov’s administration.
“Justice will take the upper hand and retribution is inevitable,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the conclusion of Moscow’s Victory Day parade on Red Square, ITAR-Tass reported.
Chechen Prime Minister Sergei Abramov took over as acting president of the region, but the killing of Kadyrov – who was the key figure in Putin’s efforts to wrest control over Chechnya from the rebels and lend legitimacy to Russia’s rule over the region – clouded the future.
“This will lead to quite serious changes in the system of rule in republic, because the system that was formed was built in accordance with (Kadyrov’s) methods of controlling the situation,” said Shamil Beno, a former separatist Chechen official who now works as human rights activist in Moscow.
News reports said that Russian officials pledged a new presidential election would be held in Chechnya within four months, as stipulated in its constitution, but there were calls among pro-Putin Russian politicians for direct presidential rule by the Kremlin.
