Putin makes surprise visit to Chechnya

RUSSIA: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday made an unannounced visit to Chechnya, the government said, amid concerns over mounting Islamist violence in Russia’s restive Caucasus region.

The Russian strongman “visited Chechnya on a short working visit” for talks with its leader Ramzan Kadyrov on the region’s social-economic situation and problems of employment, a government spokesman told AFP.

Visits by Russian leaders to Chechnya are rare events and Putin’s surprise trip came after a series of bloody attacks in the Russian Caucasus.

The visit was shrouded in secrecy and even top Chechen officials appeared unaware of the prime minister’s trip. “I do not have such information,” Kadyrov’s spokesman told AFP. The Russian government spokesman said Putin had already returned to Moscow.

Pictures broadcast on Russian television showed Putin, dressed in a white sports jacket and surrounded by heavily armed guards, clambering out of a military helicopter in Chechnya with Kadyrov and striding through a field.

He then laid a wreath at the grave of Kadyrov’s father and ex-president of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a bomb attack in 2004.

On Friday, a double suicide bombing killed four police in the Chechen capital Grozny in an attack which Ramzan Kadyrov said could have been aimed at killing him at a ceremony to mark his birthday.

Moscow, Tuesday, AFP