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Pro-Kremlin strongman posts video of opposition leader in rifle sights Pro-Kremlin strongman posts video of opposition leader in rifle sights
(about 1 hour later)
Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov has released a video showing Russian opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov in the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has posted a video of the Russian opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov in a gunman’s crosshairs.
Kadyrov has engaged in increasingly hostile rhetoric in recent weeks towards the liberal opposition in Russia, and has called President Vladimir Putin’s opponents “enemies of the people” who deserve to be tried for sabotage. Kadyrov has engaged in increasingly hostile rhetoric towards the Russian opposition in recent weeks. The video was issued weeks before the first anniversary of the murder of Boris Nemtsov, another prominent opposition figure.
The video, which Kasyanov, a former prime minister, said he regarded as “incitement to murder“, was issued weeks before the first anniversary of the murder of Boris Nemtsov, another prominent liberal opposition leader. A high-ranking officer in Kadyrov’s security forces, Ruslan Mukhudinov, has been charged with gunning down Nemtsov, Kasyanov’s co-chairman of the RPR-Parnas party, near the Kremlin in February 2015. Russia’s investigative committee said on Friday it had closed the case, although Mukhudinov remains at large.
Related: Russia robbed of a brave, authentic and distinctive voice “Kasyanov has come to Strasbourg for money for the Russian opposition,” Kadyrov wrote as he posted the video for his 1.6 million Instagram followers.
Police have charged a group of Chechen men with that killing, one of whom Kadyrov praised for his patriotism after the murder. But Nemtsov’s allies say the mastermind has not been found and that a coverup is underway. They want Kadyrov questioned. “Whoever didn’t understand will get it,” he added, a phrase that is also the title of an upcoming self-produced action film starring the Chechen leader, who has been accused of human rights abuses.
Kadyrov, 39, has said the idea that he is a suspect in the Nemtsov killing is nonsense. Last week, Kasyanov, a former Russian prime minister, called on deputies at a parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe session in Strasbourg to prepare a special report on the Nemtsov murder investigation and warned that Kadyrov’s comments, labelling the opposition “enemies of the people”, marked a broader crackdown on regime critics. During the trip, he also told the exiled Crimean Tatar leader, Mustafa Dzhemilev, that Crimea would eventually be returned to Ukraine.
Kasyanov, who once served as prime minister under Putin only to become one of his biggest critics in opposition, said he hoped the Russian president would speak out against Kadyrov. The Kremlin said it had not seen the video but would look into it. In a Facebook post on Monday, Kasyanov called the crosshairs video a “direct threat of a murder motivated by political hatred” and said President Vladimir Putin, who appointed Kadyrov in 2007, “bears personal responsibility for Kadyrov’s actions” and should condemn them.
“I assess Kadyrov’s move as incitement to murder a state or civil society leader,” Kasyanov, who is chairman of the opposition PARNAS party, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station. “It’s a straightforward criminal offence.” The RPR-Parnas deputy chairman, Vladimir Kara-Murza, seen walking with Kasyanov in the video, called it an “instigation to murder”. Kara-Murza has said he was the victim of a poisoning attempt similar to that of Alexander Litvinenko after he suffered sudden illness and organ failure in May, as a result of which he now walks with a cane.
His lawyers would “probably” contact the police to ask them to press charges against Kadyrov, he said, complaining that pro-Kremlin forces had been waging a vicious campaign against the liberal opposition for the past two years, which had included threats and poisonings.
Related: Traitors, jackals and vile liberals: Ramzan Kadyrov's insults decodedRelated: Traitors, jackals and vile liberals: Ramzan Kadyrov's insults decoded
Russia, which is in the grip of a severe economic crisis, faces parliamentary elections in September. The video is the latest attack in Kadyrov’s war of words against Russia’s liberal opposition, which has been increasingly marginalised since tensions with the west began rising in 2014. In January, Kadyrov employed the Stalin-era phrase “enemies of the people” to argue that opposition activists were puppets of western intelligence and should be prosecuted for treason. Magomed Daudov, the head of Kadyrov’s administration, posted a photograph of his boss with a Caucasian sheepdog named Tarzan, declaring that its “fangs are itching” for opposition activists and journalists.
Kadyrov’s video purported to show Kasyanov, 58, in the French city of Strasbourg, where the Chechen leader wrote that the politician had gone to get money for the Russian opposition. Kadyrov even held a giant rally against the opposition in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, where Daudov listed Kasyanov as one of many “traitors”.
Last month, Kasyanov addressed the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe and urged it to prepare a report into Nemtsov’s murder. The liberal opposition is often accused of being directed and funded from the west, charges it denies. Putin, who awarded Kadyrov a medal days after Nemtsov’s killing, has continued to condone his actions, praising him at the end of January for “working effectively”.
“Anyone who did not understand will get it,” wrote Kadyrov. In response to the “enemies of the people” remark, Krasnoyarsk city council member Konstantin Senchenko called Kadyrov an “embarrassment to Russia” but later apologised after a backlash. Kadyrov posted a video of Senchenko apologising, with the caption: “I accept.”
The sniper’s cross-hairs also briefly hovered over Vladimir Kara-Murza, a 34-year-old opposition activist who thinks someone tried to poison him last year for his political activities.