Blast Kills Chechen President, Jeopardizing Hopes for Peace

Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, the former Islamic cleric who was the Kremlin’s hope for ending nearly a decade of war in his breakaway republic, was assassinated Sunday in a bomb blast that ripped through a crowded military parade in the Chechen capital of Grozny.

The explosion killed Kadyrov almost instantly and threw into question the only plan Russia has mustered to quell the violent rebellion. At least six other people were killed, including state council leader Khusayn Isayev -- the third most powerful politician in Chechnya -- and a Reuters journalist covering the event. Lt. Gen. Valery Baranov, Russia’s top military commander in the region, was among 50 people injured by the blast.

Authorities said a 152-millimeter artillery shell was placed directly beneath the seating area where Kadyrov and other dignitaries sat for Victory Day, which commemorates the Nazi defeat in World War II. The area had been swept for hazards by a six-member security team shortly before the celebration.

“The security at the stadium was very serious,” Chechen Information Minister Taus Dzhabrailov, who received minor injuries in the blast, said in a telephone interview from Grozny. “The security service and Kadyrov’s personal guards were taking care of that. Because of the military parade, there were a lot of armed people there.

“Specialists are telling us that the shells were hidden in the concrete a long time ago,” Dzhabrailov said.

A second artillery shell planted nearby apparently failed to detonate, and authorities said a third explosive device, fashioned out of a bottle, appeared to blow up just after the initial explosion.

Television pictures showed how the VIP section of the stands at the open-air stadium turned into a mass of broken metal shards and rubble, as panicked attendees shrieked and ran for cover. Agence France-Presse reported that a well-known singer who had been performing at the time of the blast, Tamara Dadacheva, lost her leg in the explosion.

Kadyrov, who was sitting in the top row of the stands, slumped forward with blood gushing from his head, the agency reported. Before Sunday’s attack, Kadyrov had survived more than a dozen assassination attempts.

Also listed among the dead were a 33-year-old Reuters news photographer, Adlan Khasanov, two of Kadyrov’s guards, and an 8-year-old girl. The identity of the seventh victim was not clear, and some reports listed a higher death toll.

No one claimed responsibility for the blast, but a spokesman for the Chechen rebels’ so-called government-in-exile, deputy foreign minister Usman Ferzauli, said Kadyrov was “a potential target, a military target” in the ongoing war, because of his close cooperation with the Russian government.

“I think of him as a traitor, and nothing more than someone who is terrorizing his own people,” Ferzauli said in a telephone interview. “He is a potential target for the Chechen Liberation Army, and that is what happened today. He died. He found what he was looking for.”

Five unidentified suspects, all under the age of 30, were arrested in Grozny, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Dzhabrailov blamed Chechen rebels for the attack, singling out Islamist rebel leader Shamil Basayev, who has admitted planning many attacks on Russian targets.

“I think today’s explosion is Basayev’s terrorists’ handiwork,” he said, noting that in a recent military operation, leaflets calling for the killing of Kadyrov and his son were found in the pockets of dead rebels.

In a communique last month published by the Chechen news agency Kavkaz, Basayev promised to cut off Kadyrov’s head and place it at the feet of Aslan Maskhadov, elected president by the Chechens in 1997 and now directing the rebels’ military from underground.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin had counted on Kadyrov and his tough, often brutal security forces to impose order and allow Russian forces to gradually withdraw and declare an end to the war.

Putin looked grim Sunday as he stood in Moscow at the side of Kadyrov’s son, Ramzan, who heads a Chechen presidential security force believed to be responsible for dozens of kidnappings and detentions of civilians. The younger Kadyrov appeared to be fighting back tears.

“Justice will take the upper hand, and retribution is inevitable,” Putin said. Akhmad Kadyrov, he added, “was a real hero. All of his work vividly demonstrated that there is nothing in common between bandits, terrorists and the rest of the [Chechen] people.”

Analysts said Chechnya’s future remained in doubt because Russia’s only plan for the troubled republic relied on Kadyrov.

“I think that civil war in Chechnya is inevitable, in any case,” said Anna Politkovskaya, who has covered the war in Chechnya for the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Not a single person is controlling anything in Chechnya.”

The deep unpopularity of the 52-year-old Kadyrov -- whose landslide election victory last year was attributed by human rights groups and election observers to rigged balloting and the removal of rivals from the ballot -- left many analysts concluding that it was Kadyrov’s election as president that threw peace prospects into disarray.

“Their chances of receiving a peaceful settlement in Chechnya were torpedoed when they selected Mr. Kadyrov to be the new leader down there. He is, justifiably I think, despised by virtually everybody in Chechnya, and it doesn’t come at all as a surprise that he’s been killed,” said Andrew Kuchins, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“I’m afraid that nothing good is going to come of this,” he added. “We’re going to likely see more bloodshed as a result.”

Kadyrov, who once was Chechnya’s senior Islamic cleric, was a rebel leader during Chechnya’s first war for independence from Russia in 1994 but grew disillusioned with Maskhadov and Basayev, whom he blamed for recruiting radical Arab Islamists into the rebel ranks.

Kadyrov agreed to serve as administrative chief under the Kremlin’s direction in 2000. The Kremlin won passage of a referendum guaranteeing autonomy but not independence for Chechnya, and Kadyrov won the October 2003 presidential elections that formed the cornerstone of the Kremlin peace plan.

Even under Kadyrov’s administration, Chechnya has remained turbulent. Attacks on Russian troops still often number a dozen a week, and despite a series of Russian victories over rebel fighters in recent months, Maskhadov and Basayev remain at large and in command of an unknown number of troops.

Millions of dollars of reconstruction aid from Moscow has made little difference in the ruined capital. Thousands of Chechens who lost their homes have not been paid compensation, even as the Russian government has moved to forcibly close refugee camps in the neighboring Russian republic of Ingushetia.

Kidnappings averaged a dozen a week last year.

The Kremlin saw Kadyrov’s toughness and his willingness to impose a peace settlement on his people as assets that could help end the conflict.

“We know his weak spots very well,” the Kremlin’s former point man on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said in an interview before the October elections.

“But he came to us and sided with us, right in the heat of hostilities. By the way, he did it putting his own life, and the life of his relatives, at tremendous risk. And it was very important for us that one of the religious leaders of the separatists had decided to side with the federal side, having become disillusioned with the cause of the separatist movement. And this is exactly what we value Kadyrov for.”

Putin appointed Chechnya’s 32-year-old prime minister, Sergei Abramov, as acting head of the government, but few analysts expect him to hold the post permanently.

“I think nobody knows now what will happen next,” said Alexei Malashenko, a Chechnya specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

He said Putin has the option to establish direct presidential rule in Chechnya, and thus appoint a permanent prime minister, or to continue the process of “Chechenization” in the republic and hold new presidential elections, an option that he is said to favor.

“The problem is, what candidate is able to become president after Kadyrov?” Malashenko said. “Don’t forget that the most popular persons of the Chechen establishment were eliminated from the political process last year.”

Journalist Politkovskaya said there are reports that the Kremlin may be leaning toward staying its course in Chechnya by appointing Ramzan Kadyrov to succeed his father.

“If this happens, it would be the worst variant that could happen,” she said, because Ramzan “is even less smart than his father, and cannot deal with economics.”

Yakov Ryzhak of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.