RUSSIA/CHECHYNA: Chechens buried their pro-Moscow President, Mr Akhmad Kadyrov, yesterday, as security services hunted the audacious killers who derailed the Kremlin's plans to pacify the region. Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow reports
Mr Kadyrov was blown up on Sunday at a televised second World War victory ceremony at a packed stadium in Grozny, the Chechen capital, in an attack which decapitated a regime that Russia hoped would bring law and order to the province. Six other people died in the blast.
Attack helicopters swept overhead and soldiers stood guard as Mr Kadyrov's body, covered by a traditional woollen shroud, was carried shoulder-high through his native village of Tsentoroi.
Sappers searched the route taken by thousands of mourners to the local cemetery, and a military signal-jamming vehicle countered the danger of remote-controlled bombs. Armed police were posted every 100 metres along one of the main roads through Chechnya to protect officials attending the funeral.
Despite the sense of siege, the military insisted that they held sway. "In general, the situation in the republic is under the control of law enforcement bodies and federal forces," said Col Gen Mikhail Pankov, the newly appointed head of Russian troops in Chechnya.
He took the job of Col Gen Valery Baranov, who was one of 21 people still in hospital yesterday. He was in a serious but stable condition after having a leg amputated.
Col Gen Baranov was sitting next to Mr Kadyrov when the explosion ripped through the stadium's VIP section on Sunday morning. Investigators said a device made from artillery shells was hidden beneath the seating within a concrete beam, and confounded repeated searches by sniffer-dogs and sappers.
Russia's deputy general prosecutor, Mr Sergei Fridinsky, said investigators suspected the complicity of security men inside Grozny's Dinamo stadium when the bomb went off, or that of people who finished building work there only on Saturday.
"We have lots of theories," he said. "We are checking out all avenues." He admitted that no one had been "officially" detained over the attack, after reports on Sunday of five arrests.
Chechnya's administration was shocked by the loss of Mr Kadyrov, Moscow's unchallenged favourite during a four-year rule, and his death has opened a yawning power vacuum in the region. He left no obvious successor, but his son, Ramzan, who led his father's feared private army, was named deputy prime minister yesterday.
The Chechen Prime Minister, Mr Sergei Abramov, will take over from Mr Kadyrov until presidential elections are held sometime in the next four months. But the former banker holds little sway among Chechnya's powerful and well-armed clans, who fight for influence with federal troops, special forces and the successors to the KGB.
"With the death of Kadyrov, Russia suffered a great strategic defeat in Chechnya," said independent military analyst Mr Pavel Felgenhauer.