WikiLeaks cables: Chechnya's ruler, a three-day wedding and a golden gun
Ramzan Kadyrov, president of Muslim republic, showered dancers with $100 notes and gave couple huge 'lump of gold'
Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, was the star guest at a raucous Dagestani wedding and "danced clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down the back of his jeans", leaked US diplomatic cables say.
In a glorious dispatch, released by WikiLeaks, the then US ambassador in Moscow, William Burns, described how during a "lavish" reception Kadyrov showered dancers with $100 notes. Kadyrov also gave the happy couple an unusual wedding present – "a five kilo lump of gold".
The ambassador was one of more than 1,000 guests invited to the wedding in Dagestan, the largest Muslim republic in Russia's violence-prone tribal North Caucasus. The three-day ceremony celebrated the marriage of the son of the local MP and powerful oil chief, Gadzhi Makhachev, to one of his classmates.
Burns witnessed a dinner at Gadzhi's "enormous" summer house on the balmy shores of the Caspian Sea. Guests included a Chechen commander (later assassinated), sports and cultural celebrities, "wizened brown peasants", a nanophysicist, "a drunken wrestler" called Vakha and a first-rank submarine captain. Some were slick, others "jurassic", he noted.He observed: "Most of the tables were set with the usual dishes plus whole roast sturgeons and sheep. But at 8pm the compound was invaded by dozens of heavily armed mujahideen for the grand entrance of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, looking shorter and less muscular than in his photos, and with a somewhat cock-eyed expression on his face."
Kadyrov and his retinue sat at the tables eating and listening to "Benya the Accordion King", Burns reported. There was a fireworks display followed by lezginka – a traditional Caucasus dance performed by two girls and three small boys. "First Gadzhi joined them and then Ramzan, who danced clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down in the back of his jeans … Both Gadzhi and Ramzan showered the dancing children with $100 bills; the dancers probably picked upwards of US$5,000 off the cobblestones."
The ambassador added: "After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya. We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala [Dagestan's capital] and were told 'Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.'"
The wedding on 21 August 2006 was a striking example of the "deadly serious North Caucasus politics of land, ethnicity, clan, and alliance", Burns wrote. It also "underlined just how personal the region's politics can be", with weddings "a forum for showing respect, fealty and alliance among families".
But the event was also a tremendous booze-up, the ambassador wrote. "The alcohol consumption before, during and after this Muslim wedding was stupendous. Amidst an alcohol shortage Gadzhi had flown in from the Urals thousands of bottles of Beluga export vodka ('Best consumed with caviar').
"There was also entertainment, beginning even that day, with the big-name performers appearing both at the wedding hall and at Gadzhi's summer house. Gadzhi's main act, a Syrian-born singer named Avraam Russo, could not make it because he was shot a few days before the wedding."
The ambassador's host was spectacularly wealthy and owned numerous luxurious houses in places like Moscow, Paris and San Diego. He had a "large collection of luxury automobiles" and a Rolls Royce Silver Phantom. "Gadzhi gave us a lift in the Rolls once in Moscow, but the legroom was somewhat constricted by the presence of a Kalashnikov carbine at our feet," Burns told Washington.
A former rebel, Kadyrov is the Kremlin's strongman in Chechnya and Russia's most powerful regional president. Human rights groups say he and his armed security forces have carried out countless abuses including murder, kidnappings, torture and punishment of families whose relatives join the rebels up in the mountains. Kadyrov is also accused of involvement in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading liberal journalist shot dead in Moscow in 2006. She called him a "coward, armed to the teeth". He has been further linked to the murder of the human rights worker Natalia Estemirova, abducted and shot in Grozny, Chechnya's capital, in 2009. He denies both allegations.
In a masterful 7,500-word dispatch on the "unresolved" conflict in Chechnya Burns called Kadyrov a "warlord pure and simple"which was unhappy about his attempts while Chechen president to control the republic's lucrative oil reserves.
Burns's conclusion was gloomy. He said the "situation in the North Caucasus is trending towards destabilisation, despite the increase in security inside Chechnya" – a prediction borne out by subsequent events. "Sound policy in Chechnya is likely to continue to founder in the swap of corruption, Kremlin infighting, and succession politics," he wrote