Later he hunches over a table spread with fine black caviar, "choco pies" and fresh apricots. He brags about the military academy he's opened to train members of his personal security detail, then brings out a documentary his men made of the teenagers attacking tanks and fighting each other in martial arts.
"Watch this, watch this, it's the best part," he says. On screen, a cadet connects a hard kick to the head of his opponent. Techno music pulses in the background. "That's a beauty!" Kadyrov says. He admires Mike Tyson and his "fists of iron." After meeting the American boxer in Moscow, Kadyrov persuaded him to pay a visit to Grozny.
"People say I paid him a lot of money. It's not true," Kadyrov says. "He should have paid money to be allowed here."
--
"Kadyrov, you've only been president for a year and the city has risen from the ashes and the people are exulting," reads a banner on Kadyrov Prospect, just across from Kadyrov Square and the Akhmad Kadyrov mosque.
At least part of that statement is true: Grozny is coming back to life with remarkable speed. Two years ago, the city had one stoplight. Today there are supermarkets, a small hotel attached to a working airport, billiard halls, a movie theater and restaurants, two of which are named Hollywood.
All of this, courtesy of Moscow -- the price of peace. "As much as we need," Kadyrov says. "They destroyed all of it, so why shouldn't they? Our people are not to blame. They should have carried out pinpoint strikes, not what they did. I always tell them. I demand. They are obligated to rebuild and if it doesn't happen, I'll write my resignation paper."
When the evening comes, the streets are quiet and clotted with people, out strolling among the rosebushes, perched on benches, picking their way between construction sites and streets ripped open to lay pipes. But it is a renovation founded on boneyards. Human remains keep coming to light. European human rights groups have set aside money for a laboratory to identify the bodies, but so far there is no laboratory, and no identification.
There are surfaces here, and then there are the realities. The surfaces are mostly new, and generally covered with Kadyrov's face. But as soon as a klatch of old women sees visitors pulling up to the yard of a resurfaced apartment house, they begin to yell: "There's no water! There is nothing inside! Not even doors!"
