For almost two decades, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has played an unsavoury but necessary role for the Kremlin, ruling the republic with an iron fist and keeping regional tensions at bay.
Now, both Kadyrov and his heir apparent are facing health crises, highlighting the regime’s precarious succession and underscoring the fragility of this crucial mainstay of Vladimir Putin’s quarter-of-a-century rule.
Putin has allowed Kadyrov to run Chechnya as a criminal state, overseeing a vast array of human rights abuses including assassinations, torture, disappearances and crimes against the LGBT community, and enriching himself and family members in the process.
In return, Kadyrov has offered complete loyalty to Putin — including sending battalions to fight for Russia in Ukraine — and kept the region under Kremlin control, stamping out any separatist or Islamist movements that might lead to another conflict. Russia previously fought two devastating wars in Chechnya, the second coinciding with the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s rule.
Kadyrov, 49, has been dogged by reports of poor health since 2023 and the allegations have intensified in recent months.
In December, Riga-based investigative outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe claimed that Kadyrov had been hospitalised in Moscow after arriving for a state council meeting with Putin.
The next month, multiple Ukrainian news outlets said that Kadyrov was suffering from kidney failure, citing the progression of the disease as a reason for the drop in his public appearances last year.
The reports have not been officially confirmed, and Kadyrov has sought to dismiss them.
The apparent decline in the leader’s health comes as Adam Kadyrov — his 18-year-old son and apparent successor — is reportedly facing his own health challenges. This month he and members of his security team were seriously injured in a car crash, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, which is considered to be close to the Russian security services.
Ruslan Aisin, a political analyst, said the Chechen leader’s health posed a political problem both for the regime he had created at home and the Kremlin.
“The political architecture, construction that Kadyrov built with his successor is now on the edge of collapse,” he said.
“The Putin system is quite fragile. It seems like a strong dictatorship, but every dictatorship has its weak points. And the Caucasus is the weakest point for them.”
Kadyrov has repeatedly pushed back against speculation about his health, posting videos of himself on Telegram to disprove reports of extreme sickness or hospitalisation. After the most recent reports, his Telegram channel uploaded a video of him chairing a government meeting.
Emil Aslan, a specialist on the region and professor of security studies at Charles University in Prague, said it was clear from videos that Kadyrov’s health was “visibly deteriorating”, as evidenced by his personal appearance, slow movements, gait and walking stick.
Kadryov’s increasing insistence that he is in good health seemed to only affirm this, he said, as did his absence from joint gubernatorial meetings with Putin, his “reshuffling of the formal power apparatus in Chechnya” and the repeated promotion of his son Adam last year.
Adam, the third of Kadyrov’s sons, first gained notoriety as a 15-year-old when a video circulated of him savagely beating a Russian prisoner who had been accused of burning the Koran.
After the incident, he received the Hero of the Republic of Chechnya award and was appointed the head of his father’s security service. Last year, he was named secretary of Chechnya’s security council and took over control of the region’s tax authority and law enforcement.
Analysts see the flurry of appointments as evidence that Adam’s star is rising.
However, even in the event of his father’s death, the teenager would still be years away from being eligible to formally run the republic due to the job’s minimum-age requirement of 30.
While Adam could lead the republic informally with a Kremlin-friendly Chechen in the formal role, as Ramzan Kadyrov did following his own father’s death, such a scenario could be untenable for such a long time given Adam’s age, said Aisin, the political analyst.
The coming months, he said, would probably see a parade of top Chechen figures presenting themselves to the Kremlin as the best successor — either in the role of administrator, with Adam Kadyrov serving as the unofficial figurehead, or as the actual head of the region.
“The Putin regime doesn’t have that many military resources . . . for another conflict, another war. All of Russia’s military resources right now are in Ukraine,” Aisin said.
“Nobody wants a force majeure situation or a power vacuum . . . But that doesn’t mean that everything will go the way the Kremlin wants it to . . . There are a lot of armed people in Chechnya . . . There is no guarantee that with the exit of Kadyrov another conflict won’t brew.”