Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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Despite his harsh rhetoric, Kadyrov now takes a pragmatic view of the Islamic State’s influence on the situation in Chechnya and is committing himself to “exorcise” would-be recruits or returnees from the Middle East rather than merely destroying them.
Vladimir Putin is making a bid to regain global respectability by leading a fight against ISIS and evoking the anti-Hitler coalition of World War II. The West is yet to be convinced that the appeal to be “brothers-in-arms” is serious.
The Chechen connection to the Nemtsov’s murder has split the ruling elite. Putin’s problem is that Kadyrov has completely cleared Chechnya of all rivals, either Chechen or Russian—having fed and groomed his “dragon,” he has no Plan B in Chechnya.
The perpetrators of violence have staked their claim to power, or at least a more active role in formulating the regime’s identity and methods. If we are to assume that the president is not directly linked to Nemtsov’s murder, it seems that someone else wants to push Putin in a more decisive and punitive direction.
It is impossible to imagine Ramzan Kadyrov calling his subordinates and directly instructing them to commit the murder of Boris Nemtsov. However, the xenophobia and fear of the West characteristic of some segments of Russia’s Muslim community, including Muslims in the North Caucasus, creates a favorable climate for such acts.
The ISIS cannot be defeated through military strikes only. The Islamic State is just a tip of the radical Islamist iceberg, which is firmly entrenched in the Muslim world.
It is still unclear whether Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman’s trip will bring any deep changes in Russian-Israeli relations. However, the fact that Lieberman’s agenda in Moscow included such a wide range of questions shows that, at present, the two countries’ interests intersect at many points.
Over the past few years, India has been paying increasing attention to the threats of crime, terrorism, and espionage in cyberspace.
Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic in the North Caucasus, is now firmly entrenched in Russian politics at the federal-level, and it appears that he is there to stay, because Putin and Kadyrov really need each other.
An optimal model for the painless existence of Muslims in an alien cultural and religious environment has not yet been found and is unlikely to appear in the near future. In essence, Europe is dealing with a conflict of identities, which continues to increase.