Succession

On 25 September, Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov posted a video on his Telegram channel that quickly went viral.

The seven-second clip shows a stocky teenage boy, dressed head to toe in military fatigues, punching and kicking another teenager. The second, much thinner boy has a shaved head and appears to be wearing socks but no shoes. He is curled up on a plastic chair and lifts his arms to protect his face from the other boy’s blows. At the end of the video, the larger boy grabs the slighter one by his shoulders and hurls him to the ground, where he pins him down and begins repeatedly hitting the back of his head.

The boy in green is the 16-year-old son of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Putin loyalist who has ruled Chechnya since 2007, committing human rights abuses so egregious that Human Rights Watch has accused him of “crimes against humanity”.

The boy in socks is 19-year-old Nikita Zhuravel, who was arrested in Volgograd in May for allegedly burning a Quran and then transferred illegally to a pre-trial detention centre in Muslim-majority Chechnya, where the viral video was filmed. Multiple residents of Chechnya had reportedly appealed to the head of the Russian Investigative Committee to be recognised as “victims” of the Quran burning even though it took place hundreds of kilometres away.

In the video caption, Ramzan Kadyrov praised his son’s conduct, telling his Telegram channel’s 2 million subscribers that Adam “did the right thing” in beating Zhuravel and that he was proud of his third-oldest son, who had “always been distinguished” by the “adult ideals of honour, dignity, and protectiveness”.

More official praise for Adam Kadyrov followed. In the two months since the video was made public, Adam Kadyrov has been the recipient of an unprecedented number of awards from Chechnya as well as other Muslim-majority Russian republics. In October he was officially named Hero of Chechnya, and on 5 November he was appointed head of his father’s security department.

The awards and new appointment — alongside the continued signs of his father’s ill health — have provoked speculation that Adam is being groomed as Ramzan’s successor. Several media outlets published profiles of Adam this autumn, scrutinising his public appearances throughout childhood and tabulating his recent accolades. Many of the articles mention that before he became head of Chechnya, Ramzan also served as the head of security for his own father, Chechnya’s first president Akhmat Kadyrov.

Among regional experts, however, there is no consensus on the significance of Adam’s recent appointment. By law, the head of Chechnya must be at least 30 years old, so Adam won’t become legally eligible for the post for another 14 years. 

Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch sees the new title as purely symbolic. 

she told Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Lawyer Timofey Shirokov agreed, telling independent media outlet Caucasian Knot that it was likely “Ramzan’s security is handled by professionals from private security units.” He doubted Adam’s position came with any real responsibilities at all, especially given that children under 16 — which until very recently included Adam — are allowed to work a maximum of four hours a day. 

Other experts suggest the Kadyrovs are unlikely to feel constrained by the laws concerning either child labour or succession. Human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina told Novaya Gazeta Europe that “in Chechnya, [laws] don’t matter. There is only one law: Ramzan’s command.”

Ivan Klyszcz, of Estonia’s International Centre for Defence and Security, agreed. “Legal frameworks have never stopped Kadyrov,” Klyszcz said, adding that he “wouldn’t dismiss out of hand” the prospect of Adam succeeding his father. 

Disregard for age requirements is an especially marked pattern where the Kadyrov children are concerned. The three eldest Kadyrov sons, Akhmat, Eli and Adam, won the 2016 Grand Prix “Akhmat” — a Mixed Martial Arts tournament organised by their father — aged just 10, 9, and 8, respectively, which led to Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights opening an official investigation into the sport. It was a rare slap on the wrist for Kadyrov from the federal authorities, who had traditionally turned a blind eye to the transgressions of the long-time Putin ally.

Ramzan has seemed to thumb his nose at age requirements even more explicitly in recent years. In October 2022, a week before posting a video of his teenage children supposedly on the front line in Ukraine, he opined on Telegram that even “minors” should be “prepared to defend our motherland”. His own children had been trained to “handle various weapons beginning in early childhood,” he bragged.

Other open flouting of age requirements has come to light this year, such as when, in February, a photo published online showed 15-year-old Adam behind the wheel of a car in Dubai, where the legal driving age is 18. And the eldest Kadyrov son, Akhmat, was married underage, at 17, in a lavish ceremony in March.

Akhmat’s status and future remain open questions among observers, who disagree about whether Adam’s recent promotion implies a demotion for his older brother. Harold Chambers, a political analyst at Indiana University who specialises in the North Caucasus, believes that even though media attention has shifted to Adam following the Zhuravel video, Akhmat is still being readied for a powerful position in his father’s administration. In April, just before his wedding, Akhmat enjoyed a highly unusual private meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, an event that echoed Ramzan’s own first appearance with the Russian president following the assassination of his father in 2004.

Akhmat is likely to have more practical responsibility than his younger brother, Chambers believes. “Adam is getting attention for doing basically nothing,” Chambers told Novaya Europe, while Akhmat “is actually working and has now officially joined the government.”

But others do see the shift of focus as significant. Gannushkina believes that “clearly Akhmat disappointed [Kadyrov] in some way,” and Novaya Gazeta journalist and veteran Chechnya reporter Yelena Milashina has described Akhmat as “shy and tongue-tied,” noting that he required a tutor to accompany him to meetings to “instruct him and smooth out awkward moments”. 

Adam exhibits no such meekness. 

according to Gannushkina. 

Adam has “long attempted to cultivate his image as a ‘little Ramzan’,” Chambers agreed, noting the brand of quasi-military apparel, “Dustum 13”, which Adam designed himself and which he and his entourage wear. The brand is named after Adam’s father — a reference to his military call sign — and the idea itself seems borrowed from Ramzan, who vaunts his reverence for his own deceased father and often sports clothing and other paraphernalia dedicated to the memory of Akhmat Kadyrov Sr. 

Adam’s social media presence, too, is full of militant bravado. In a recent Instagram reel, he brandishes two Kalashnikov rifles over a caption that reads “we are the one in whose veins Chechen blood flows. We are the ones who have never hidden behind others’ backs.” Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Adam made a recorded speech in which he declared himself ready to fight.

Still, there may be political drawbacks to a temperament like Adam’s. Chambers believes that Adam is probably “too much of a wildcard” for the Kremlin to seriously consider him as a potential successor to his father. He referenced allegations from the Chechen Human Rights group VAYFOND and the Dagestani news agency NIYSO that Adam has a drug problem, including one report — which Chambers views as credible — that Adam Kadyrov killed two people in a car accident while high on crystal methamphetamine last year. 

Despite his brutish reputation, some speculate that Adam’s display of aggression in the Zhuravel video — and the rewards he’s reaped from it — may just show that he was in the right place at the right time. Had Akhmat found himself in a position to demonstrate “sadistic violence”, he might now be the recipient of the awards, Klyszcz hypothesised. 

Lokshina agreed that, regardless of Adam’s violent inclinations, the video says more about the adults behind the camera than it does about Adam Kadyrov. “Adam Kadyrov would not have been able to enter that cell and beat that prisoner if not for the encouragement of adults,” she said. 

Even if the video was orchestrated as a publicity stunt, Novaya Europe’s sources all agreed that the larger point is not about Adam specifically so much as it is about the consolidation of the Kadyrov family’s political power in Chechnya. According to the Caucasian Knot, a third of all senior officials in Chechnya are Ramzan Kadyrov’s relatives, 23% are from his childhood village, and 12% are other friends and acquaintances. Within Kadyrov’s immediate family, the sons are not the only ones with prominent roles; several of Ramzan’s daughters also hold important positions. Twenty-four-year-old Aishat is Chechnya’s Minister of Culture, 23-year-old Khadizhat is head of the republic’s preschool education department, and 20-year-old Khutmat is charged with overseeing the healthcare system.

And while talk of Ramzan’s iIl health might put more pressure on him to project his family’s strength, most political scientists treat these rumours with caution. Ben Noble, Associate Professor of Russian Politics at UCL, likened the rumours about Kadyrov’s terminal illness to those surrounding Vladimir Putin’s health: “Reports of the imminent death of both leaders have, with the benefit of hindsight, proven greatly exaggerated,” Noble said, adding that more than anything else, they bespeak the personalist nature of autocratic rule in Russia and Chechnya.