It was never a secret that Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Moscow president, wanted his most powerful political benefactor, Vladimir Putin, to retain the Russian presidency for at least another four years. Nevertheless, Kadyrov seems quite at ease with Putin’s chosen successor, current First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. Why is Kadyrov so comfortable with Medvedev’s candidature? How do the two men regard one another? What implications will Medvedev’s expected inauguration hold for future relations between Moscow and Grozny?   

BACKGROUND: In fact, there is no way of knowing for certain how Dmitri Medvedev regards the situation in Chechnya as it presently stands. For government officials working under Putin, it has been impermissible to publicly debate the pros and cons of the Kremlin’s prevailing policy in Chechnya. This taboo has proven remarkably durable, even during times of serious crisis such as the Dubrovka theatre siege in 2002 and the Beslan tragedy in 2004. Policy making in respect of Chechnya has been the preserve of President Putin and a small cabal that includes his deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov.

Medvedev has certainly not been a member of this group. Nor has he shown any desire to become a member. During a whistle-stop visit to Chechnya last April – an occasion that potentially represented an opportunity for him to establish his credentials on the Chechnya question – Medvedev was noticeably demure. Chaperoned by Ramzan Kadyrov, Medvedev restricted himself to uttering a series of banal observations on the general progress of the republic’s reconstruction scheme before hurriedly flying back to Moscow. On hearing that President Putin had named Medvedev as his preferred successor, Kadyrov said: “I am personally familiar with Dmitri Medvedev and consider him to be a man of his word”. Kadyrov went on to predict that 99.9 percent of the North Caucasus’ electorate would vote for Medvedev in Russia’s presidential elections in March.

Aside from the fact that Medvedev is Putin’s choice (Putin being Kadyrov’s most powerful patron in the federal hierarchy) why is Kadyrov so keen on his candidacy? Could it be that he perceives Medvedev as a soft touch, someone he could manipulate with relative ease? How strong Medvedev will prove in the face of aggressive lobbyists has emerged as a cause for concern for some analysts in recent weeks. Speaking to the Moscow Times last December, the head of the Institute of Globalization Problems, Mikhail Delyagin, predicted that Medvedev would be “raped by lobbyists right on his table on the second day of his presidency” due to the supposed weakness of his personality.

However, Medvedev is already reputedly under the sway of Russia’s perhaps most successful political lobbyist of the past ten years – the aforementioned Vladislav Surkov. Throughout Putin’s tenure, many observers have come to regard Medvedev as Surkov’s subordinate political ally. However, doubts had recently been expressed about the closeness of the connection between the two when Medvedev publicly took issue with Surkov’s cherished ideological brainchild, the concept of “sovereign democracy”. But no lasting rift between the two has emerged on the basis of this disagreement. United Russia, a party intimately associated with Surkov, has openly endorsed Medvedev’s candidature. Surkov is presently accompanying Medvedev on the latter’s pre-election tour of the Russian regions.

IMPLICATIONS: There are strong indications that the locus of decision making regarding Chechnya will, as of March of this year, be shifting from the Kremlin to the cabinet room. The nature of Putin’s relationship with the Kadyrov clan has been highly informal, with the president deputizing Surkov with the task of maintaining propitious ties with Ramzan (and before him his father, Akhmed-Hajji). The informal, extra-institutional nature of these relations means that they are unlikely to survive the upcoming presidential transition per se. Instead, this relationship will be reconstituted via the Russian cabinet room, where Vladimir Putin is set to alight next March as the country’s new, post-election prime minister.

From March onwards, therefore, Kadyrov’s political weather vane will be located atop the Russian White House rather than the domed towers of the Kremlin, as previously. Another development of significance in this context is the return of Dmitri Kozak to Moscow after serving three years as Putin’s presidential representative to the southern federal district, a jurisdiction that includes Chechnya and the wider North Caucasus. Kozak now sits at the cabinet table as minister for regional development. The importance of this particular ministry is set to grow over the next year or so. Already, the number of staff working in this ministry has doubled, from 300 to 600.

More importantly, the ministry is set to become the main source of federal funding for the regions. This development will undoubtedly turn Kadyrov’s head, given the importance he places on continued federal funding for Chechnya as well as the fact that his relations with Kozak during the latter’s time in the southern federal district were never cordial. See 31 October 2007 issue of the CACI Analyst.

During Kozak’s tenure as presidential representative, relations between Grozny and the Kremlin were, in a formal sense, supposed to proceed as follows: Chechnya’s president (Ramzan Kadyrov and before him, Alu Alkhanov) lifts the phone to Kozak in Rostov-on-Don, who in turn lifts the phone to call the president’s office to relay the Chechen president’s message. Similarly, Putin was to communicate with the Chechen leader through the good offices of his presidential representative. In reality, however, especially with regard to matters of real political significance, Kadyrov (in reality the republic’s key powerbroker well before he actually replaced Alkhanov as president) simply called Surkov directly, who communed with Putin on whatever subject was troubling the Chechen president. Hence, the officially designated Alkhanov-Kozak-Putin communication relay was consistently trumped by its virtual counterpart, the Kadyrov-Surkov-Putin connection. The latter line of communication has remained prominent since Kadyrov’s elevation to the republic’s presidency last spring. However, with Kozak now in charge of the federal purse-strings, Kadyrov will surely be obliged to adopt a more solicitous attitude toward him.

CONCLUSIONS: With Putin set to become prime minister in March, Ramzan Kadyrov can rest assured that his principal benefactor will remain a figure of considerable political import under a Medvedev presidency. Indeed, during an indiscreet moment on the fringes of United Russia’s December 17 congress, Kadyrov according to Itar-Tass reportedly said that Putin would remain Russia’s most influential person after the presidential election. This may be why Kadyrov has so lavishly feted Medvedev’s candidacy. He is confident that a “President Medvedev” will keep his nose out of Chechen affairs. Interestingly, there is no allusion in any of Kadyrov’s sound bites to how Medvedev’s presidency will auger for Chechnya. This is likely because Kadyrov confidently expects the status quo ante to prevail following Medvedev’s likely election.

But the advent of a Medvedev presidency may well indirectly affect Kadyrov’s future relationship with the federal center. As mentioned, Kadyrov’s political antenna will soon be trained specifically on the Russian cabinet room. While he will be comforted by Putin’s projected presence at the head of the cabinet table, he will simultaneously have to contend with Kozak, a prudent and relatively capable official, who now oversees federal fiscal policy in respect of Chechnya and other locales, where he operates with a mixture of stubbornness and tact, as noted in the July 26, 2006 issue of the CACI Analyst.

It has become clear that Kozak was recalled from the south not because he was considered a failure there, but because Putin had earmarked him for grander, although not altogether unrelated, duties. The prospect of Kadyrov petitioning Kozak’s ministry for additional federal subsidies may actually represent the first step along the path to properly institutionalizing relations between Grozny and the federal centre. Hence while Medvedev’s likely election will not worry Kadyrov in and by itself, it could portend significant alterations in the contours of the current relationship between Grozny and the federal center.   

AUTHOR’S BIO: Kevin Daniel Leahy holds a postgraduate degree from University College Cork, Ireland.