Putin’s lapdog wears Prada: Chechen leader Kadyrov poses on TikTok while his men kill civilians in Ukraine

The rugged reputation comes from his ancestors’ centuries of fierce fighting against waves of invaders and occupiers, delivering blow after blow to those who sought to conquer their mountainous homeland.

But Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s combat boots come from Prada’s 2019 collection, priced at about $1,580 (£1,210) retail. His grotesque sensibilities, including an inclination to harm animals and dispatch his henchmen to abduct and kill gay people, dissidents and journalists rather than fight for his homeland.

Kadyrov’s role in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has put him in the spotlight that he craves, albeit less for his fashion choices than accusations of grave war crimes and human rights violations in the suburbs of Kyiv and the besieged port city of Mariupol.

More Uday than Qusay, or for “Game of Thrones” fans, more Joffrey than Tommen, the 45-year-old has also been mocked as a “TikTok warrior” for social media posts in which he has pretended to be in Ukraine whilst remaining in Russia. His gunmen have also been accused of staging videos in attempts to make themselves look fierce, firing off their weapons at empty buildings.

The entire blood-splattered spectacle is a far cry from the pious Muslim shepherds, farmers and civil servants who took up arms on behalf of Chechnya over the decades.

“The Kadyrovites have very little to do with Chechen values,” says Christopher Swift, a national security lawyer and specialist on Russia and the Caucasus. “They’re a bizarre amalgam of very conservative Islamic ideas out of the Middle East and slavish devotion to the Putin regime.”

Experts say Kadyrov’s rise and flamboyant behaviour are both emblematic and symptomatic of the twisted values, sadistic worldview, and craven jostling for position within Russia’s political elite.

“He considers himself a foot soldier of Mr Putin and he serves Mr Putin and the Kremlin and no one else,” says Miro Popkhadze, Georgia’s former Ministry of Defence envoy to the UN.

“But he also is disliked by the elite—the oligarchs, and the security services,” says Popkhadze, a researcher at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“There is a fight going on between them under the radar for rights and privileges. That’s why he’s using social media—to give the message that he’s there for Putin and making a difference. That’s why he is making a lot of noise.”

The relationship between Kadyrov and Putin stretches back decades, to the time of Russia’s second Chechen war in the late 1990s. The rule of Boris Yelstin was fading, and Kremlin insiders were looking to elevate Putin, then an obscure former KGB operative, as his successor.

That’s where Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad, came in. In late 1999, the warlord and religious scholar, who had helped deliver a humiliating defeat against Russia in the first Chechen war, abruptly switched sides, helping the Kremlin both crush Chechen aspirations and bolster Putin’s image as a competent tough guy.

“The Kadyrovs became very important and very indispensable,” says Thornike Gordadze, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Security Studies and a scholar at France’s Sciences Po.

“The fact that Chechnya is part of Russia is thanks to Kadyrov. The Russian troops play a secondary role,” adds Gordadze, who is also a former Georgian government official.

But from the beginning, the Kadyrovites had a reputation for abuse and gruesome violence, more marauding bandits than a disciplined armed force.

“They would go from house to house not only taking the properties of people and abducting, but taking money and inflicting sexual violence,” says Matthias van Lohuizen, a Dutch scholar who served as an aid worker in Chechnya during the early 2000s.

Akhmad was elected president of the newly-reconquered Chechen Republic of Russia in 2003, only to die at the hands of his former comrades in bombing a year later.

The younger Kadyrov, who had been a militia leader, immediately adopted Putin as a sort of father figure, and took over as president as soon as he turned 30 in 2007.

His governing skills were threadbare, but his militia – the Kadyrovtsy – specialised in killing and terrorising unarmed civilians, serving as his extrajudicial praetorian guard.

Xural.com