I regret to pull such a long excerpt, but Tom Parfitt’s column at the Guardian is very interesting today, and contains a number of personal observations you won’t find in any of the wire reports on the recent tragic events in the Caucasus:

It is some time since strategists in the Kremlin have been pulling out their hair, wondering how they created the monster which is Kadyrov. Installed as a fixer who could stamp out the rebels and rebuild Grozny, he has largely done both things while turning the republic into his own personal fiefdom. Chechnya, traditionally an egalitarian society in which no individual is considered above his peers, is now full of risible billboards of Kadyrov clutching smiling children like some modern day Enver Hoxha (“The streets in Grozny are so clean,” say his fans, but the streets are clean in Belarus and North Korea). Political opposition in parliament has been extinguished and many potential opponents are no longer a threat. Kadyrov’s greatest rival, the former battalion commander and Hero of Russia, Sulim Yamadayev – himself, admittedly, no fluffy democrat – was rubbed out by an assassin in Dubai in March.