Putin’s Shadow Recruits

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Hello, and welcome back to Tomorrow Will Be Worse!

Gmar khatimah tovah to all of you marking Yom Kippur tonight.

Events are moving quickly in Russia and Ukraine. On Friday, Vladimir Putin formally annexed four regions of Ukraine—Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson—and announced that any attack on them was an attack on the Russian Motherland, but did so without actually specifying what their borders were. The ceremony, and Putin’s speech, followed by that evening’s Red Square concert, marked Russia’s full embrace of...

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Putin’s Shadow Recruits

Ramzan Kadyrov has long ruled Chechnya with the aid of Kremlin money and firepower. But if the war in Ukraine is putting some cracks in Putin’s image, it hasn’t spared his viceroy, either.

JULIA IOFFE

Since Russia first invaded Ukraine, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has played a pivotal role in Vladimir Putin’s war efforts. He has been both a loyal cheerleader and a provider of troops, but he has also been critical of the president and his generals’ prosecution of the war, viciously and publicly laying into them when he feels that the Kremlin isn’t fighting ruthlessly enough. He has also claimed to have sent thousands of Chechen fighters into Ukraine and bragged on social media that...

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