Free Republic

In the Soviet times Chechnya attracted tourists from the whole country, but after the armed conflict with Russia the republic got reputation of a crisis spot. Despite the current post-war conditions Chechnya intends to develop its travel infrastructure and to turn into “Chechen Switzerland”.

“Chechen Switzerland” – that is the way president of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov calls the villages that earlier appeared in military news. The first tourists expected to come to the republic in the future are students of biological, historical, and geological faculties.

GROZNY, Russia (AP) — Police killed the Chechen rebel leader allegedly acting on a tip from within his network and dealing a possible blow to efforts to spread the increasingly Islam-inspired insurgency throughout southern Russia. Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev was shot Saturday during a raid on a hideout in his Chechen hometown of Argun, nine miles east of Grozny. He had been planning a terror attack in Argun to coincide with the Group of Eight summit of leading industrialized nations in St. Petersburg in mid-July, the Moscow-backed Chechen premier claimed. Wearing combat fatigues, Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov posed for TV cameras next...

April 1, 2007 Putin hands Chechnya to his ‘little Saddam’ Mark Franchetti, Moscow As the owner of a pet tiger, and a man who likes to show off his rocket propelled grenade firing skills in public, Ramzan Kadyrov, 30, could hardly be expected to celebrate modestly when he is inaugurated as president of Chechnya this week. It promises to be the most ostentatious event seen in the war-ravaged republic. Patricia Kaas, the French pop diva, has been invited to sing at the ceremony before more than 1,500 guests. The bill for the banquet alone, which will include caviar and champagne...

GROZNY, March 27 (Itar-Tass) - President of the Chechen republic Ramzan Kadyrov on Tuesday departed for the lesser Hajj to Mecca and Medina. He embarked on the pilgrimage ahead of an official inauguration ceremony. The Chechen government said that Kadyrov arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday accompanied by Chechen Mufti Sultan Mirzayev, Finance Minister Eli Isayev and Deputy Prime Minister Ziyad Sabsabi. His plane belonging to the Rossiya air carrier landed at Jeddah airport from where the Chechen delegation went to the holy Muslim city of Mecca where Kadyrov intends to take the Umrah, or the lesser Hajj, visit shrines...

GROZNY, Russia – Chechnya's newly installed, Kremlin-backed president accused federal authorities Friday of torturing detainees, echoing claims that have long been made by Russian and international rights groups. Ramzan Kadyrov's comments appeared to be an attempt to boost his popularity and deflect blame from his paramilitary security force, which has faced accusations of abductions, torture and other abuses. Kadyrov said inmates at a detention facility controlled by ORB-2, a unit of the federal Interior Ministry's southern district, were “systematically subjected to torture.” He said regional prosecutors had opened an investigation into the situation at the facility in the town of...

Day-to-day security in swaths of Chechnya is left to locally recruited Kremlin-loyalist forces, who run things much as they please. This makes their de facto chief, Putin-appointed President Ramzan Kadyrov, perhaps the most important man in Chechnya. ...the young Kadyrov's power seems unlimited. His portraits are peppered across the ruins of Grozny, at the entrance of many villages, and on the windshields of his supporters' cars. Local television is filled with his pronouncements. Mysteriously wealthy, the burly, bearded Kadyrov boasts about his private zoo, which includes a lion and a wolf, in his home village of Tsenteroi. When he turned...

ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA, the 48-year-old woman shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow Oct. 7, was not a public official, a member of parliament, or a leader of an opposition party. But in the eyes of many people, the murder of this fearless journalist has become a symbol of the slow death of freedom in Russia -- a death evidenced by many other events large and small. For the past several years, the Russian state under Vladimir Putin has been steadily working to bring the media to heel. In this stifling and intimidating atmosphere, Politkovskaya, a correspondent...

TALLINN, Estonia - April 4, 2006 (UPI) -- Russia's drive to "Chechenize" the war in the Caucasus could backfire badly on it. Those in the Russian Federation who believe that "Chechenization" will resolve the conflict in that north Caucasus republic in a way Moscow wants should remember what happened when the United States pushed "Vietnamization" of the war in Indochina a generation ago, according to a leading Russian analyst of ethnic conflicts. At the end of the 1960s, Sergei Marakedonov writes in an article posted on the Politcom.ru portal, advisors to U.S. President Richard Nixon concluded that the best way...

MOSCOW - His public image as a devout Muslim warrior who frets about the morals of Chechnya's population as much as he worries about separatist rebels has been carefully constructed by spin-doctors. But Chechnya's pro-Moscow Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov has suffered a public relations reversal after allegedly becoming ensnared in an embarrassing sex scandal that has made his increasingly loud moral preaching look rather hollow. Though the scandal has received little play in the Russian media, it is potentially embarrassing for President Vladimir Putin since the Kremlin has chosen Ramzan as its point man in the strife-torn republic. Ramzan's aides...

The pending appeal of the President of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, to the Russian Federation's Constitutional Court may trigger a destabilizing chain of events in the Caucasus. Kokoity, who is totally dependent on the Kremlin, would not have asked for such a radical step if he wasn't encouraged from the highest level in Moscow. If such developments spin out of control, they can cause a Russian-Georgian military confrontation with unpredictable consequences for the region and the world. My recent meetings in Moscow and Washington indicate that Russian-Georgian relations have deteriorated to the point where some officials in the Kremlin are...

GROZNY, Russia, March 10 (Reuters) - The pro-Moscow Chechen government has started to demand that female state workers wear headscarves, women in the turbulent Muslim region said on Friday. "I received a verbal warning that if I did not wear a headscarf, I would lose my job. I had to wear it the next day so as not to bring trouble on my head," said one woman who works in the regional administration and asked not to be named. A spokesman for the region's new prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, who has pushed through a series of Islamic decrees, denied the...

LAST SUNDAY, while returning home from Pakistan aboard Air Force One, President Bush received a telephone call from his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The two men discussed several issues that threaten to disrupt U.S.-Russian solidarity in the war on terror--foremost, Russia's diplomatic support for Iran in the dispute over its nuclear program at the IAEA, and its decision to welcome Hamas, which recently won control of the Palestinian parliament, to Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is set to continue this dialogue in Washington this week in a series of direct talks with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza...

First Deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov two more steps toward legal confirmation of his status of lord of Chechnya. The bureau of the high council of the United Russia Party decided to recommend him as party leader for Chechnya, and Kadyrov himself announced his intention to expel from the republic Danish humanitarian organizations working with Chechen refugees. Referring to the caricatures of the Islamic prophet that appeared in a Danish newspaper and created a worldwide scandal, Kadyrov said that Danes “play with the feelings of a billion and a half people and act as provocateurs… Danish social organizations...

Polygamy proposal for Chechen men Chechnya has lost so many men to war that survivors should be legally allowed to take several wives, acting Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov has said. Speaking on Russian radio, the pro-Moscow leader said this was "necessary for Chechnya because we have war - we have more women than men". He was backed by Russian parliamentary deputy speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Russian law restricts citizens to one marriage, but Islamic custom allows a man to take up to four wives. 'No interference Mr Kadyrov told Ekho Moskvy radio that women in the Russian republic outnumbered men by...

MOSCOW - The final element in a three-step Kremlin plan to "normalize" breakaway Chechnya falls into place Sunday as the tiny republic's voters elect their first parliament since the current war began in 1999. Moscow authorities hope the campaign, which has seen 353 candidates from eight political parties competing in a relatively free atmosphere, will convince a skeptical world that Chechnya has returned to Russia's constitutional fold after two bitter wars of secession in 11 years. "Official Moscow needs these elections to strip separatists of their last shreds of legitimacy in the eyes of the West," says Timur Aliyev,...

GROZNY, August 3 (RIA Novosti) - First Vice Prime Minister of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has banned gambling in the republic, announcing that all gambling facilities in Chechnya will be closed. "I am giving a week's notice to the owners of gambling parlors to dismantle their equipment," he said. "Otherwise, I will destroy the machines myself. Gambling is against the laws of Islam and has a negative impact on the younger generation." He also denied rumors that he owns a slot-machine business. "There are rumors that I own slot-machines. It is a lie," Kadyrov said, adding that he has never been...

GROZNY, Russia - Against a backdrop of war, squalor and terrorism, Chechens voted Sunday for a replacement for their assassinated president in a vote the Kremlin hopes will bring some stability to the violence-torn region. A man was killed when he attempted to blow up a polling station. Kremlin backing has made Chechnya's top police official, Maj. Gen. Alu Alkhanov, the unquestioned favorite in the race. Russian officials have warned that Chechen rebels might stage attacks to mar the voting — a danger highlighted by the near simultaneous crashes of two jetliners last week that killed 90 people. Traces of...

Russia's most wanted man, the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, issued a statement yesterday in which he claimed full responsibility for the recent assassination of Chechnya's Moscow-backed president and appeared to suggest that Vladimir Putin might be next. In a text repeatedly referring to jihad, Allah and the Koran, Basayev, 39, seemed to suggest that his separatist fighters were preparing to assassinate President Putin or his Prime Minister, Mikhail Fradkov. The announcement, posted on a Chechen rebels' website called Kavkaz Center, included a sinister reference to Mr Putin's two teenage daughters, Ekaterina and Maria. Basayev described the murder of Akhmad Kadyrov...

Rebel Warlord Says His Group Carried Out Killing of Moscow-Backed Chechen Leader MOSCOW May 17, 2004 — A top rebel warlord has claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that killed Chechnya's Moscow-backed leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, and pledged to continue attacks against the Russian authorities, according to a statement released Monday. Warlord Shamil Basayev, who calls himself Abdullah Shamil Abu Idris, claimed responsibility for the May 9 attack in a statement that was posted Monday on a rebel Web site, calling it a "small, but important victory." He said that other such operations against Russia's so-called collaborators in Chechnya were in...