Chechen Leader's Advice on Women: Lock Them In

Moscow: Ramzan A Kadyrov, the pugnacious president of the southern Republic of Chechnya and a close ally of President Vladimir V Putin, finally had enough Wednesday of social media users' mocking him relentlessly for seeming to push polygamy.

His solution? Keep women locked up at home and off social media.

"Lock them in, do not let them go out, and they will not post anything," Kadyrov said in a video to a sheepish group of men and women who kept their arms folded across their chests and their eyes firmly on the ground during the harangue.

The scene, filmed at what appears to be his government palace and broadcast on local television, was prompted by what Kadyrov, who has long shown a flair for hyperbole, described as "The Wedding of the Millennium."

The social media explosion was set off last weekend in Grozny, the Chechen capital, when a 17-year-old bride was married off to a pal of Kadyrov's, a district police chief pushing 50 and reportedly already married.

The first report of the betrothal had emerged in late April in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which reported that the police chief, Nazhud Guchigov, had ordered the young woman's parents to hand her over by May 2 or he would take her by force.

After the article was published, Kadyrov jumped into the action, saying he had investigated the marriage proposal and found both the young bride, Kheda Goylabiyeva, and her family agreeable.

He accused "some liberals" of stirring up an anti-Chechen tempest, citing examples of old men (and one famous female singer) married to much younger spouses in Moscow. He also fired his minister of information.

"To love all ages surrender," he wrote, quoting Alexander Pushkin, Russia's national poet. (Kadyrov has a penchant for posting his pronouncements, not to mention his entire life, on Instagram.)

The wedding went ahead on Saturday, with Mohamed Daudov, Kadyrov's chief of staff, leading a decidedly downcast-looking bride to the altar. Daudov was later quoted as saying polygamy should be legalized.

Kadyrov danced at the wedding and posted a video of it. If the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton in England was the wedding of the century, he wrote, then the outpouring of interest over the May-December marriage in Chechnya constituted the biggest celebration in 1,000 years.

What about the polygamy angle?

"We have followed the norms of Islamic law and national traditions," he wrote.

Polygamy is illegal in Russia, but Chechnya under Kadyrov already has something of a notorious reputation for considering federal law optional.

For months, following a series of violent episodes, government critics and others in Russia have been asking whether Russian law actually applies in Chechnya.

The most significant case involved the apparent links between the Chechen security services and the main suspects arrested in the assassination of Boris Y Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and outspoken government critic gunned down outside the Kremlin in late February. There were also reports that federal investigators had been unable to question one of the prime suspects after he fled to Chechnya.

Those events exposed a deep rift between the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and the Chechen leader over his perceived ability to act with impunity. The fact that he publicly threatened to shoot dead any federal police officers found operating independently in Chechnya did not help matters.

Kremlin officials habitually defend Kadyrov as their man who keeps the Muslim insurgency in Chechnya quiet. On polygamy, it seems, there is no difference.

Life News, a cable channel close to the Kremlin, rapidly swung into action, producing a television interview in which the young woman described her prospective groom as "manly."

Pavel Astakhov, the Kremlin official who is supposed to protect children's rights in Russia, defended the practice of older men taking young brides. During a radio interview, he suggested that was especially the case in places like Chechnya where women were "shriveled" by the age of 27, looking at that age like most Russian women do at 50.

His remarks prompted another wave of outrage, with hundreds of Russian women in their 20s posting pictures with the hashtag #wrinkledwomen. Astakhov apologized, saying that women of all ages were "wonderful and delightful."

The official assurances from Kadyrov and others did nothing to quiet the torrent of ridicule over the marriage. People posted cartoons mocking the police chief, or images like a 19th-century oil painting of a young bride being married off, called "The Unequal Marriage."

Annoyed, Kadyrov summoned about a dozen people who had evidently offended him with their posts, lecturing them in the presence of the police-chief groom and other officials.

"Stop it!" Kadyrov barked, before suggesting that women be locked up specifically to deny them access to the social media application WhatsApp.

"Behave like Chechens," he said. "Honor of the family is the most important thing. Don't write such things anymore. You, men, keep your women far away from WhatsApp!"