Friends and relatives of Boris Nemtsov dismissed suggestions from the Kremlin that he was killed by Islamic fundamentalists as attention shifted to the power wielded across Russia by a Chechen warlord.
President Putin bestowed the Order of Honour on Ramzan Kadyrov yesterday, a day after a subordinate of the Chechen leader was charged with murdering Mr Nemtsov. Mr Putin praised his Chechen protégé for his “outstanding achievements, social activities and many years of honest work”.
Mr Kadyrov’s violent methods have inspired fear far beyond the borders of Chechnya, the Russian republic that he runs as his personal fiefdom with minimal interference from Moscow.
Opponents have been murdered in Moscow and abroad. Last year he told reporters that “74,000 Chechens are awaiting the go-ahead to restore order in Ukraine”, and Russian separatists in east Ukraine have said that Mr Kadyrov provides extensive financial and military support.
He has been accused several times by human rights groups of abducting and killing dissidents. After an Islamist attack in Grozny in December, Mr Kadyrov responded by burning to the ground the homes of the militants’ relatives, earning a mild reprimand from Mr Putin.
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On Sunday investigators charged a Chechen man, Zaur Dadayev, over Mr Nemtsov’s murder and yesterday Russian state television continued to play footage of the suspect pacing his courtroom cage and announcing “I love the Prophet Muhammad”.
That was meant to reinforce the theory outlined by investigators within hours of Mr Nemtsov’s death that Mr Putin’s critic had been killed because he had offended Russian Muslims.
Mr Kadyrov said on Sunday night that Mr Dadayev was a “genuine Russian patriot”, a former deputy commander of one of his battalions who, like him, had been greatly shocked by the publication by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo of satirical cartoons that led to a terrorist attack in Paris in January.
Mr Nemtsov, 55, a former deputy prime minister, was shot dead as he walked home in Moscow on the night of February 27. Mr Dadayev and another man were charged with murder.
Three others arrested were remanded in jail pending charges, which must be filed within ten days. All five are from Chechnya or other parts of the North Caucasus, according to Russian news agencies.
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Yesterday Mr Nemtsov’s eldest daughter led a growing chorus of doubts over the official version of events. Zhanna Nemtsova told The Times that “the authorities” were to blame for her father’s assassination, even if one of the men in custody had pulled the trigger of the gun that ended the life of the Russian opposition leader on a bridge in front of the Kremlin. “I have no faith in the official investigation,” she said.
Mr Kadyrov had threatened prominent Russians who denounced the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Mr Nemtsov was one of the opposition figures who condemned the Paris killings and he had also attacked Mr Kadyrov’s response to the tragedy.
“Everybody is already sick and tired of Ramzan’s threats, but he is certain that Putin will not let anyone touch him, so he is growing increasingly brazen every day,” he wrote on his Facebook page in January.
However, Ilya Yashin, another prominent opposition leader, wrote on Facebook yesterday that it was “gibberish” to suggest that Mr Nemtsov, who “never said a bad word about Islam” was killed because he had offended Muslims.
Ms Nemtsova concurred. “My father was an opponent of Putin — he had nothing to do with religious matters. Many Chechen people showed great respect to him because he helped to stop the Chechen war,” she said.
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“One of the suspects worked for the ministry of internal affairs” — Zaur Dadayev served in a gendarme unit — “and even if he killed my father, that is an additional proof that the authorities are to be blamed for the murder.”
Mr Kadyrov’s loyalty to the Kremlin is beyond doubt. Two months ago he gave a speech to about 20,000 armed Chechen military volunteers in Grozny at which he offered their services to Mr Putin to “defend Russia, its stability and its borders”.
Although Russia has regular forces, “there are special tasks that can be solved only by volunteers and we will solve them,” he said. “We are Vladimir Putin’s infantry and everyone had better know that.”
The presidential decree that honoured the Chechen leader also gave a medal for “services to the fatherland” to Andrei Lugovoy, an ultra-nationalist MP and former KGB agent who is chief suspect in the 2006 assassination of the Kremlin critic and MI6 informant Alexander Litvinenko in London.