Photo: EPA-EFE/YURI KOCHETKOV
Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has threatened three Russian lawmakers with a “blood feud” following a failed raid on the headquarters of Russia’s biggest online retailer Wildberries last month.
Kadyrov said that he had discussed the Wildberries “incident” with representatives of Chechnya’s law enforcement agencies and warned the public against “stirring up” the situation, stressing that accusing Kadyrovites of staging the raid was “an attempt to paint this as an ethnic issue”.
In a video posted on his Telegram channel, Kadyrov can be heard threatening to declare “a blood feud” against Senator Suleyman Kerimov and State Duma Deputy Rizvan Kurbanov, both from Dagestan in Russia’s North Caucasus, as well as State Duma Deputy Bekhan Barakhoev, from neighbouring Ingushetia.
“If anyone has any complaints against Kadyrovites, they should come to me personally, since I am the main Kadyrovite,” Kadyrov said on Thursday, adding that “anyone who believes that they can pit entire ethnicities against each other on domestic disputes” was “deeply mistaken”.
Russia’s richest woman and founder of Wilberries Tatyana Kim and her estranged husband Vladislav Bakalchuk, who were a couple for over 20 years, had been locked in a bitter dispute for months over a deal that would see Wildberries merge with advertising firm Russ Group, a much smaller company controlled by ethnic Armenian brothers Robert and Levan Mirzoyan, who reportedly have ties to Kerimov. Kim announced the completion of the merger on 1 October.
According to Ingush independent media outlet Fortanga, Kadyrov claimed that the three lawmakers had “seized” Wildberries from Kim and attempted to order Kadyrov’s assassination. “If they don’t prove otherwise, I’m officially declaring a blood feud,” he said.
Kadyrov previously expressed support for Bakalchuk, vowing to help him thwart the deal, which he called “a corporate raid” in July.
The tensions escalated in September when Bakalchuk, who owns a 1% stake in the company, led a group of men — many of them ethnically Chechen — to the company’s headquarters in Moscow, provoking a shootout that killed two Ingush security guards. Ingushetia, a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus, has a long history of inter-ethnic tensions with neighbouring Chechnya.
The deaths of two Ingush men at the hands of Chechens reportedly caused a rise in anti-Chechen sentiment in Ingushetia, with thousands of residents attending the funerals of the security guards in September.
“The Kadyrovites and everyone who supports them have repeatedly shown the sincere hatred of our people over the past decade,” Ingush independent media outlet Fortanga quoted one of the attendees as saying.