Ramzan Kadyrov

'I'm going to make them scream." The president of Chechnya looks out at the menagerie of birds, floating on the murky man-made lake in his backyard: black swans, pelicans and ducks. Ostriches roam the opposite bank. Deep grunts of laughter shake his thick chest, jolting his barrel arms. Then Ramzan Kadyrov stops laughing. "Bring me the tiger!" he barks to his camouflage-clad servants. "Bring me bread!" Two former guerrilla fighters wrestle a chained tiger down the muddy slope.

President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday dismissed the president of the war-battered republic of Chechnya and named its prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, as acting president. The dismissal of Alu Alkhanov came after days of speculation that he was engaged in a power struggle with Kadyrov, who is alleged by human rights groups to be responsible for abductions and detention of civilians and suspected separatist rebels.

President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday gave power in Chechnya to widely feared pro-Russia strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, even as Europe's human rights chief noted allegations of torture and other abuses by Kadyrov's henchmen. Kadyrov, son of an assassinated Chechen president, previously served as prime minister and had been expected to seek the presidency after reaching the minimum age of 30 in October.

A Moscow court handed a moral victory to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov today, ruling that the head of one of Russia's most respected human rights organizations had smeared his reputation. Oleg Orlov, chair of Memorial rights group, was ordered to pay Kadyrov about $2,300 in damages for blaming him for the shooting death of a Chechnya-based colleague. Orlov was also ordered to retract his statement. The lawsuit stemmed from this summer's death of Memorial's Chechnya-based rights activist, Natalya Estemirova, who had been one of the few remaining voices willing to speak about repression, murder and disappearances in Kadyrov's Chechnya.