



1 / 17 Chevron Chevron Instagram

Ramzan Kadyrov, the thirty-nine-year-old ruler of the Russian republic Chechnya, whom I write about in this week’s magazine, is a complicated politician: brutal and uncompromising, emotive and sincere, wholly loyal to Vladimir Putin while at times appearing to be a rogue center of power. He has brought Chechnya, the site of two wars against Moscow in recent decades, back into Russia’s orbit while also ruling over a fiefdom that is, in many ways, controlled more by his own personal edicts than by Russian law. Under Putin, power in Russia has retreated to the shadows, with most high-ranking officials wary of publicity or attention; Kadyrov, by contrast, seeks it, and has skillfully crafted a public image that, even if many find it distasteful, has made him a political figure of undeniable national significance.

Nowhere are Kadyrov’s paradoxes more evident than on his Instagram account, which he uses as a medium to showcase the many sides of his personality to his more than a million and a half followers. The feed is a cross between a Presidential news service and a Hollywood film studio; his posts can be bureaucratic, theatrical, or seemingly playful. A photo of Chechen ministers meeting to discuss health-care services lives alongside a trailer for a supposedly forthcoming action movie, in which Kadyrov shoots a machine gun into the air. A shot of Kadyrov playing in a pile of autumn leaves calls on his followers to post similar photos with the hashtag #ЗолотаяОсень, or “GoldenFall.”

In some ways, his postings reinforce traditional Chechen values: he often shows himself at the mosque for prayer (Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim republic) and is fond of posing with weapons—an homage to the classic image of the Chechen man showing courage and skill in battle, and also a reminder of his own role in defeating the region’s Islamist insurgency. But, in posting photos of his wife and children, Kadyrov has also challenged longstanding Chechen taboos about family propriety, presenting what is, for Chechnya, arguably a modern interpretation of fatherhood. (His public statements on questions of gender and family are often more unwaveringly conservative; many of his policies are based on Sharia law and adat, a traditional Chechen code of behavior.)

For Kadyrov, Instagram is among his primary tools for demonstrating both his hold on power inside Chechnya and his continued usefulness to Putin, his patron and benefactor, the one man upon whom his rule depends. (He frequently posts portraits of Putin, or photos of the two of them together, with messages of fealty and outsized loyalty.) It is a case of virtual power and influence becoming real: an Instagram post that becomes a political sensation inside Russia only further proves Kadyrov’s immutable role in the system Putin has created. Of late, Kadyrov has waged a public campaign against Russia’s embattled liberal opposition, varyingly calling its members “traitors” and “jackals.” He has carried this battle over to Instagram as well.

On February 1st, he posted a video of Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who is now a fierce critic of Putin, edited to appear as if it were shot through the scope of a sniper rifle. Instagram deleted the post, saying that it violated its terms of service, which prompted Kadyrov to turn, at least for the moment, against the app that has given him so much notoriety. “Here it is,” he wrote. “The much-acclaimed freedom of speech, American style!” Just hours later, he was back to posting, congratulating a relative on his birthday and wishing him success as a boxer, and sharing pictures of himself with Russia’s minister of culture. On February 3rd, he issued an explanation of sorts for the recent controversy: under a photo of himself standing, arms outstretched, on a snowy mountaintop, Kadyrov wrote that his “huge and respected audience of ordinary Russian citizens” should know that he “does not need P.R.” Instead, he intends his Instagram account to unite his followers as a “single powerful fist, rallied around our national leader, Vladimir Putin, confidently moving forward.”