The footage of Putin’s meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov’s eldest son, Ahmed Kadyrov, filled many frames almost twenty years ago, when Putin himself received Ramzan Kadyrov in the Kremlin after the assassination of his father, Ahmed Kadyrov.
Unlike those events, however, Ramzan Kadyrov is alive. But his health is a topic of discussion in Chechnya, Russia, and now beyond. Not long ago, the German newspaper Bild published an article suggesting that Ramzan Kadyrov appears to have serious kidney problems.
Moreover, the recent meeting between Putin and Kadyrov’s eldest son suggests that both the Kadyrov family and the Kremlin take these problems seriously. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain the fact that Putin received Ahmed II Kadyrov in the Kremlin without his supposedly still-alive father, which contradicts the political subordination if we perceive him as a member of his father’s team. However, it is logical to see him as his father’s future successor.
In this connection, it should be noted that the problems with the kidneys or any other problems that may require a new successor in the near future do not necessarily have a «natural» origin. For example, one of Kadyrov’s team members, Apti Alaudinov, was recently officially poisoned. The Kremlin’s poison industry gained worldwide notoriety after the poisoning of Navalny was exposed.
In this context, it is also worth noting that the circumstances of the assassination of Ahmed Kadyrov Sr., after which Ramzan Kadyrov took his place, are far from clear. Yes, the responsibility for it was claimed by an armed resistance, but this does not contradict the fact that someone could have facilitated the leak of important information to this resistance and facilitated the execution of such an operation.
Regardless of one’s attitude to the figure of Ahmed Kadyrov Sr., it is clear that he was a figure with political experience and ambitions incomparable to those of his son, who is completely dependent on and loyal to the Kremlin. Moreover, the assassination took place shortly after Ahmed Kadyrov Sr. raised the issue of the need for a treaty between the Chechen Republic and Russia, similar to the one it had with Tatarstan at the time. This clearly did not fit into the plans of the Kremlin, which had already embarked on a course of rejecting all such agreements and curtailing the sovereignty of the republics.
Who knows, perhaps the same history is repeating itself now. Over the past twenty years, Ramzan Kadyrov himself has gained some political experience and weight. He is despised not only by supporters of Chechnya’s independence, for whom he is more a consequence (occupation) than a cause, but also by many ill-wishers in Moscow and possibly in Grozny (occupied by Dzhokhar).
On the other hand, Kadyrov’s seventeen-year-old son as his successor would be much less problematic for such circles than his father. Just as he himself proved to be much more convenient than his father twenty years ago.
So it is not impossible that we are witnessing the beginning of a new operation, the successor in Chechnya. Who knows if it will be followed by a new operation, the successor in the Kremlin?