Recently, Ramzan Kadyrov reappeared in the public field.
He stated that he "stayed too long" in the place of the head of the Chechen Republic.
Saying that he is going to leave before being removed.
However, Kadyrov already spoke about his desire to leave his position as head of Chechnya in 2015,
and in the 16th, and in the 17th.
And in 2020, he took sick leave, having transferred the powers of the head of Chechnya to the chairman
of the government of the republic;
it looked like he was about to announce his resignation. But every time Kadyrov returned,
every time he went to the next election and won 97-99 percent of the vote.
This time, however, Kadyrov's announcement of a possible resignation coincided with rumors that Putin
was furious at the failure of the invasion.
That, they say, now he will remove one of the security officials, and Kadyrov will occupy vacant chair.
Immediately the era of prophets and “insiders” began.
In particular, various media outlets and public speakers, quoting each other, tipped Kadyrov
for the position of head of the National Guard.
We will return later in the video to this difficult scheme - where Zolotov replaces Shoigu as Minister of Defense,
and Kadyrov takes his place.
But we will start, since the head of Chechnya reminded of himself, with his role
in the current war and how this role has changed.
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In the last weeks before the start and in the first few months after the invasion, Ramzan Kadyrov
took on the image of one of the main warmongers.
He asked Putin to “take Ukraine”, he threatened President Zelensky,
and with the outbreak of hostilities, he began to compete directly for the audience with the Ministry of Defense.
No other Russian official, no other general and no other troops have been represented in the public arena -
and especially in social networks - as much as Kadyrov and the Kadyrovites.
At first, it all looked even organic: the whole image of Kadyrov is built on militancy, he is the only head
who wears the epaulettes of a general, everyone has heard about his invincible army.
But problems soon began.
Kadyrov was once again caught lying, and ridiculous lies at that.
Once the media distributed his photographs allegedly in Ukraine,
but for some reason there was a Rosneft gas station in the background.
Then his fighters handed out "humanitarian aid" - but with Ukrainian labels.
For a month, he promised 26 times that Mariupol would be taken any moment.
And even in the very first weeks of the war, the very image of the Kadyrovites somehow faded very quickly.
It turned out that their combat effectiveness does not go beyond the Internet:
no one sees them on the front line, but videos are regularly released on TikTok and Instagram.
In those videos, Kadyrov’s subordinates shoot an empty seven-story building, show off their weapons
in some nameless forest, demilitarize a traffic light and, in general,
engage in some kind of random nonsense, like teenagers who robbed an armory.
And it wouldn’t be a problem if this feeling developed among us, a cut off chunk:
liberals, emigrants and other national traitors.
However, the direct participants in the events had similar feelings: while we are risking our lives here
every day and paying a bloody price for taking another farm, some TikTok troops are posting nonsense
about their own heroism, while hanging out in the deep rear.
In such a deep rear that the videos of Kadyrovites at some point became a valuable source
of information for military analysts, for example Ruslan Leviev and his team.
It's simple: if the Kadyrovites are filming videos from somewhere, then this territory is already 100%
under Russian occupation, and the front has gone far enough.
Why don't the Kadyrovites really take part in the hostilities, following in the deep rearguard of the Russian troops?
There are two objective reasons for this.
First, they can't. The Kadyrovites are not an army.
These are divisions of the National Guard, in fact, paramilitary police.
They do not have heavy equipment and artillery, the main equipment at their disposal is light armored
vehicles with bulletproof protection.
With such equipment and training, it is possible to perform the functions of a military police in the occupied territory,
but there is definitely nothing to do on the front lines.
Secondly, Ramzan Kadyrov cannot afford to lose his own troops.
The very existence of armed people who are personally devoted to Kadyrov is a guarantee
of the retention of power within the Chechen Republic,
the position of Kadyrov in Russia and, ultimately, his safety.
Kadyrov builds his power on fear and violence.
He has a lot of enemies inside Chechnya, no less - in the vertical of Russian power,
among the employees and leadership of the special services.
If Kadyrov loses his own power resource, if the people busy killing, beating,
torturing and intimidating his enemies remain in Ukrainian soil, then no Putin will save him.
We saw what happened to the Russian Guardsmen who went into the zone of active hostilities near
Kyiv in the first days of the war.
There is simply nothing left of them.
A broken column of paddy wagons, helmets, shields and plastic armor covered with snow.
One of the symbols of this war.
The exact same fate would have befallen the Kadyrovites, if they were not far from the Ukrainian army.
The only difference is that Putin has hundreds of thousands of National Guardsmen - he can afford such performances.
If I may say so.
And Kadyrov has only a few thousand people - and if they die, then there will be nowhere to take new ones from.
But it doesn't matter what the reasons were.
It is important that Kadyrov's behavior not only hurt his personal reputation - the image of a brave warrior
at the head of a wild division very quickly migrated towards the wedding general - but had an extremely
negative effect on the morale of the troops.
While you really risk your life every day, every extra meter of land advanced can leave you without limbs,
you live in mud, blood and horror, you eat whatever you get, your pea coat is three sizes larger -
at this very time some guys are playing Rambo and tell what great warriors they are.
There was a rumor that state and near-state publications were completely banned from quoting Kadyrov
and referring to his statements.
Without commenting on the rumors, I must say that since the end of spring,
once the main speaker of the war really disappeared from the public field.
He appeared only in two “parody sketches”, where the actor in the image of Vladimir Zelensky
signs the surrender to Ramzan Kadyrov.
These videos are so miserable that they evoked a response from the opponents
of the war rather than from its apologists.
In general, literally until the last days, Kadyrov stayed quiet, and we heard very little about him.
What is the reason for his new public resurrection?
Why is this statement about the fact that he “stayed too long” in his place,
which immediately caused a lot of personnel theories?
The answer seems quite simple: Kadyrov wants to draw attention to himself again.
Six months ago, he was the main "Putin's infantryman", and by the summer he became the author
of humorous sketches at the level of school skits.
It is safe to assume that Kadyrov and his troops did not live up to Putin's expectations.
That belief in them as invincible warriors is one of those delusions that first led Putin to the decision
to unleash a war, and now they are leading this war to defeat.
Without Putin's support, ceasing to be irreplaceable for him, Kadyrov will last even less than without his own troops.
He cannot afford to vegetate in the role of another governor - after all, such official can always be replaced.
No, he must constantly remind of himself.
And the format of the statement in the spirit: I’m about ready to leave, a kind of cosplay on Comrade Stalin,
sounds like an expectation of a request to stay.
As an attempt to prove its indispensability.
At this point it does not look like some kind of cunning scheme.
So far, this looks like a personal initiative of Kadyrov,
who wants to return to his former bureaucratic weight and his role as Putin's personal security official,
the main one on bloody assignments.
The prospects for appointing Kadyrov as head of the Russian Guard look doubtful, for many reasons at once.
Starting with the fact that such a huge feeder, driving hundreds of billions of rubles through itself,
where you can enter the Forbes list on supply of cabbage alone, no one will just give it away.
There, everyone will figure it out on their own, and they don’t wait for Kadyrov’s guards in their wallets.
Nevertheless, it makes sense to discuss the option of personnel reshuffles, not so much in the context
of Kadyrov's statement, but in terms of the situation as a whole.
In general, the Russian army failed the invasion.
10 years of leadership of Minister of Defense Shoigu, longer than any predecessor,
hundreds of billions of dollars for rearmament -
it all ended with the fact that the main news after six months of the war was the capture of the village of Peski.
The main fact is not how to put the stress in the word.
the main fact about which is that the population in 2019 there was 9 people.
No matter how much you smile for the public, it is clear to you yourself: what Minister Shoigu
has done in 10 years of peace cannot be corrected in a few months of war.
Everything is decomposed, everything is plundered, everything is failed.
Personnel decisions in such a situation are inevitable, but we practically do not see them.
One of the reasons is that the very structure of the Russian nomenklatura prevents the dismissal of Shoigu,
Bortnikov or Zolotov.
By tradition, it is not customary to dismiss from the highest ruling elite.
Resignation is usually disguised as a transfer to another position, often ceremonial.
That is, you, of course, will no longer be a minister, but we will provide some position of special representative
of the president for the protection of hippos in Burundi.
There are two notable exceptions to this tradition: Yeltsin's press secretary, Sergei Yastrzhembsky,
and Russian Railways' president under Putin, Vladimir Yakunin.
The rest, no matter much they screwed things up, were not forced to leave.
To dismiss a senior military official now is to publicly admit that the war is not going according to plan.
And the Russian leadership is trying to avoid this as much as possible.
They have to come up with idiotic excuses: that the war plan included a retreat from near Kyiv and Chernihiv,
and the abandonment of Snake Island, and insane losses.
Yes, even if the dismissal is disguised as a promotion, even if the person responsible for military failures
is transferred to some ceremonial position, it will be obvious to everyone that such a reshuffle
is the punishment for a failed invasion.
Therefore, the Russian leadership is delaying personnel decisions.
In the end, let me state the hypothesis in a blitz format.
Does Kadyrov's statement mean anything in and of itself?
No, it doesn't. Ramzan Kadyrov is not an official of the presidential administration.
He is an independent politician, and his most obvious interest today is not to fall out of the agenda.
The reaction to his statement clearly says that he managed to attract attention.
Any statement by Kadyrov should be considered from the following fact: Kadyrov has a lot of enemies.
There are people who do not mind becoming the new Kadyrovs.
There are enough thugs.
There are people to whom he did great harm, there are quite a few influential people
for whom such a state of affairs, when some kind of field commander who is not subordinate to anyone but Putin,
is sitting in the governor's chair, seems nonsense.
We are not the only ones who think that Kadyrov has somehow fallen out of favor lately.
Kadyrov does not care about our considerations, but if his influential enemies begin to think so,
then irreparable things may happen.
Blood sugar will drop, the heart will stop, the helicopter will take off negatively - there are many options.
He needs a label, he needs Putin to say: no, Ramzan Akhmatovich, we, of course, will not let you go,
the country needs your knowledge and experience in an hour of difficult trials.
Will there be a big reshuffle in the leadership of the armed forces?
That's a very difficult question.
It is clear that the further into the forest, the thicker scapegoats must be.
Someone must be to blame for everything.
Some nameless general of the General Staff is in no way suitable for this role - the scale is not the same.
In general, it is obvious that Putin is to blame for everything.
But the system can't afford that.
The most obvious target is Shoigu.
But the formal resignation of Shoigu will force the system to do what it terribly dislikes.
It will have to admit failures, admit that everything did not go according to plan, that the war is falling apart.
Moreover, it is not falling apart by chance, it is falling apart as a result of 10 years of corruption and incompetence.
Secondly, to remove one of the most influential clans, which controls not only two ministries
(Defense and the Ministry of Emergency Situations), but also several regions, primarily the Moscow Region,
and a lot of very significant commercial interests.
A lot of money is tied to Shoigu, a lot of influential people, he has financial, administrative and power resources,
and dealing with him is not as easy as it seems.
What will happen? I don't know and no one knows.
We have already spoken about this: our system does not know how to fight, it was not built for war,
it has no plan for war.
Especially for that war, which has reached a stalemate. Rather, we will see not a plan, but a lot of
chaotic decisions, including personnel, in an attempt to find the solution that works.
From the history of the last 20 years, we know how the machine of the Russian state reacts to crises.
We saw this in 2008, then in 2014, then during the coronacrisis of 2020 - it ignores them.
This works: the market economy is designed in such a way that if it is not purposefully hit on the head with a shovel,
businessmen are not imprisoned for entrepreneurial activity, then it will stabilize itself, for better or worse.
It is difficult to live up to a complete catastrophe and real famine in a market economy, unlike a planned one.
Yes, it stabilizes itself worse without state aid.
But it won't collapse to the bottom at all - because the person who bakes bread and the person
who wants to eat it will always come up with a mutually beneficial deal.
It doesn't work that way in war.
War cannot be left to chance.
This is a centrally controlled event, the success or failure of which really depends on the state that conducts it.
And now we see the attempts of the Russian state to get out of such a crisis, from which no one will get out for it,
from which you cannot hide.
These attempts come down to chaotic actions, as a result of which the Russian army is gradually weakening,
and the Ukrainian one is gaining strength.
And the longer this process continues, the more likely it is that we will finally
see what we are all waiting for - real turbulence in the Kremlin.
See you tomorrow.