A third Chechen war?

By Andrei Piontkovsky

Even the best definitions oversimplify living reality. This is no less true of the widely accepted belief that our ruling kleptocracy is divided into a “Big Bucks Party” and a “Party of Blood.”

In reality, there are more groupings, and the divisions between them shift over time. For example, the “Bloodbath Party” has become increasingly visible recently as a third force within the Kremlin, which ever since the days of Ramzan Kadyrov Senior, has stubbornly opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kadyrov Project for pacifying Chechnya.

This is not the time to debate the various merits and demerits of that project, but merely to note that right now the only alternative to it is a full-scale third Chechen war—and that would be a military, political and moral catastrophe for Russia. It would be the height of folly to embark on that adventure for a third time in a row. This is something even Mr. Putin recognizes, completely mired as he is in the Chechen issue. Until very recently, I had supposed the same to be true of Dmitry Medvedev’s entourage.

That, however, does not deter the Bloodbath Party, which has never reconciled itself to the loss of its feeding grounds in Chechnya or, perhaps even more distressingly for it, to losing a territory where it exercised the intoxicating power of life and death over any of its inhabitants. The Kadyrov Project deprived them of these two visceral satisfactions, and for that, they wholeheartedly loathe him.

Izvestiya, a government newspaper, recently published extensive compromising material about Mr. Kadyrov which had been supplied to it by the intelligence services. The point at issue is not the veracity or otherwise of this material. We already knew that the Chechen field commanders resolve their disputes by methods far removed from the precepts of bourgeois humanitarian law. It is not for us, with hundreds of writs against the Russian Federation proceeding through the European Court of Human Rights, to lecture them about that. What is significant is that, for the first time, in media under the Kremlin's control, the taboo on criticizing Mr. Kadyrov has been broken. Shortly afterwards, another highly respectable newspaper decided to make its columns available for a declaration of blood vengeance against Mr. Kadyrov.

The Bloodbath Party is loudly declaring what it will wager and what its agenda is. To those seeking an alliance with it in the developing conflict within the Kremlin, it is making clear that the price of its support is Mr. Kadyrov.

The usually well-informed weekly New Times, which has inside sources in both the Kremlin and the White House, reports:

“The head of state is showing he is capable of coming to terms with the security interests, the siloviki. People in the FSB, for example, are certain that Ramzan Kadyrov is obliged primarily to Medvedev’s entourage both for the international escalation of the criminal case against State Duma Deputy Adam Delimkhanov, accused [by Dubai] of masterminding the assassination of Ruslan Yamadaev, and renewal of the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya which the regime appeared to have terminated. As far as one can tell, the president shares the federal security interests’ mistrust of the Chechen leadership.”

Read, if you will, this paragraph again. It contains extremely important information about the new configuration of forces inside the Kremlin. The Big Bucks Party (Mr. Medvedev’s entourage) has not only entered into a tactical alliance with the Bloodbath Party, showing it is “capable of coming to terms with the security interests,” but we find it is orchestrating media coverage of the anti-Kadyrov campaign.

Like all surprising political coalitions, this alliance has its internal logic. The security interests who fiendishly want to go to work on Chechnya again are, of course, closer to Mr. Putin and his group than to Mr. Medvedev and his money men, but they have no illusions that Mr. Putin will ever agree to the removal of Mr. Kadyrov.

Putting the kibosh on the Kadyrov Project would be tantamount to an official Russian admission of defeat in the Second Chechen War, and declaration of a third war. It would mark a return to 1999, and from a much worse starting point. It would totally discredit the attempt to legitimize Mr. Putin politically as “the savior of the Fatherland in 1999.”

Our leading political commentators, from Alexander Prokhanov to Leonid Radzikhovsky, have been telling us with great conviction and passion that the schoolchildren of Beslan were burnt alive, and the hostages at the Nord-Ost musical were gassed for the greater glory of Russia and the triumphing of her geopolitical interests. Now what could they say?

Mr. Putin would for sure be one of the first political casualties of a third Chechen war, but the Big Bucks Party is already making it abundantly clear that it would like to pension him off. There is both a coincidence of tactical interests and a complementing of each other’s strengths. One side is capable of organizing any provocative act, while the other can provide a media and political cover-up for it. A first, as yet cautious, phase of this process seems to have been observable for about a month already.

Let us not forget that the leaders of the Big Bucks Party, are the same people who masterminded Operation Successor in 1999 and, allying themselves at that time with the security interests who were smarting from defeat in the First Chechen War, unleashed the Second Chechen War by orchestrating Basayev’s incursion into Dagestan and blowing up apartment blocks in Moscow, Volgodonsk, and (unsuccessfully) in Ryazan. Their aim was in order to sweep Mr. Putin, whom they believed they would control, to power on a wave of anti-Chechen hysteria.

Why, 10 years on, should not these musketeers pull off the same stunt again and put in power a more malleable (as they once more suppose) individual?

Needless to say, just as last time, their motive is solely to advance the noble cause of “continuing liberal reforms in Russia.”

As another of the masterminds behind Operation Successor-99, Boris Berezovsky, used to say, “So what if there is a war? Some people will kill other people. Someone is always killing someone else somewhere. And just look at the business opportunities!”

While Mr. Putin’s faction is preparing to “finish the job” in Georgia, Mr. Medvedev's entourage is embarking on a dangerous liaison with proponents of a third Chechen war. The both groupings are trying to outbid each other to hold the “patriotic” card. The battle for the Caucasus is always a battle for the Kremlin.

- Andrei Piontkovsky is the executive director of the Strategic Studies Center in Moscow and a well-known political analyst in Russia.