Chechens

But the thing is that Chechnya is ruled quite differently from the rest of Russia, and Kadyrov has far more power than a normal governor would have.

You, your listeners probably heard about prosecution of queer Chechens and the brutal murders that happened there for a long time.

Uh, Chechnya became a kind of, um, testing ground for Russia on many cruel practices that later spread to the main territory and to the rest of Russia.

Uh, one of the first practices that was started in Chechnya was forced apologies.

When political activists or queer Chechens or anyone else who, for some reason, you know, was not liked by Kadyrov was detained, it-- they were not just punished, they were also were recorded on video and humiliated in a way that they had to forcefully apologize and say, "Oh, we were so wrong.

We are so sorry.

We actually believe, uh, Kadyrov.

Mm-hmm

And the idea with the Cossacks was, was they really appreciated good land.

They would build their houses and they would identify immediately with the land they then claimed as their own, even though it really belonged to the Chechens and the Dagestanis who didn't have a system of land, much as I think the Native Americans didn't have the same systems and divisions of land.

And that, of course, was a very good way for the Russian Empire to create conflicts, which was an easy reason to step in and finish off the job or not, as the case became.

Have I been reading too much romance or are the Cossacks the great horsemen? Don't I remember that they were absolutely famous for that?

So they're percolating, whether it's ISIS, whatever you want to call it.

brand them as, but it's in a sense also that serves Jolani's agenda because he can get rid of some of the Uyghurs, the Chechens, the Turkmenistanis and so on out of Syria and send them into Yemen to fight there, which is another step in the war against Iran.

not that Yemen and the resistance movement in Yemen is a proxy of Iran.

They're an ally of Iran.

That he's ex-Spetsna.

He killed 16 Chechens.

All kinds of stuff.

Well, the phone conversation gets broken up between Christopher and Tony.

Mm.

And, and, uh, it would, uh, uh, without, with, without a doubt have, uh, sealed the determination of the nation to punish the Chechens.

That was what, what they were counting on.

Mm.

But in this case, there was so much accompanying evidence, and as we now know, the State Department also...

I mean, the American Embassy in Moscow had a great deal of evidence.

Uh, and their sources also warned them that this, this was, uh, this was just no, uh, ordinary terrorist act, uh, carried out by Chechens.

Uh, it was, in fact, something that, uh, uh, implicated the re- i- it was something that was carried out by the regime.