In this episode of La Loupe, Xavier Yvon paints the portrait of Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of the Republic of Chechnya, with Léo Vidal-Giraud, journalist specializing in Russia, and former correspondent for L’Express in Moscow.
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The team: Xavier Yvon (presentation and writing), Mathias Penguilly (editing), Jules Krot (directing) and Marion Galard (work-study).
Credits: Rossiya 1, Kremlin, TikTok
Music and dressing: Emmanuel Herschon / Studio Torrent
Picture credits: Alexey Nikolski / Ria Novosti / AFP
Logo: Anne-Laure Chapelain / Benjamin Chazal
How to listen to a podcast? Follow the leader.
Xavier Yvon: I have just added a shelf in the Wardrobe of La Loupe, because by dint of devoting episodes to the different characters surrounding Vladimir Poutine, I said to myself that I needed a place to store them all together. I will therefore be able to include Aleksander Douguine, the ultra-nationalist guru Axel Gylden told us about in a previous episode:
Axel Gylden : “You have to see him more as an inspiration, as an ideologue and understand that his ideas are taken up by Putin’s first circle.”
Xavier Yvon : In this first circle, we also find the former president Dmitri Medvedev whom we mentioned with Charlotte Lalanne:
Charlotte Lalanne : “There is a diplomatic telegram as early as 2008 which describes Medvedev as I quote ‘Putin’s Robin alias Batman’, in other words a supporting role.”
Xavier Yvon : And we also explained to you the role of the businessman Evgueni Prigojine, the executor of the low works of Putin.
Leo Vidal-Giraud : “Prigogine is the friend of Putin’s minions, he enters the circle of Putin’s service providers, people who cannot be given a job and who will do it: disinformation, troll factories and the mercenaries.”
Xavier Yvon : In the Putin galaxy, we therefore have the thinker, the acolyte, the “follower”… and there is still room on the shelf to add today a new character who could be nicknamed the vassal: Ramzan Kadyrov. The leader of Chechnya shares many similarities with Yevgueni Prigojine: he too has a private army and a freedom of tone rare in Russia, he has many enemies in the Kremlin and he will have a role to play in the post-Putin… The big difference is that this man with a bearded face and often laughing eyes has a territory, and a quasi-autonomous state, and, thanks to the war in Ukraine, he could well be tempted to emancipate to make it a country in its own right… even an emirate in the heart of the Caucasus.
For further
PODCAST. Russia: from hope of the West to “turbo-patriot”, the drift of Dmitry Medvedev
“The Black Book of Vladimir Putin”, exclusive excerpts: KGB, scabrous projections, religion…
War in Ukraine: Zelensky accuses Putin of practicing “mine terrorism”
Losing Crimea: the colossal defeat that Vladimir Putin fears