As the largest country on the planet, the Russian Federation has a quite understandable disharmony between the cultures of all its nationalities, religions and cultures due to its straddling from Europe to Asia. The Caucasian republics profess Islam, Ramzan Kadyrov is a proud Muslim.
And like a true Muslim ruler, he is not satisfied with one wife. “I am for a man to have several wives if he needs them and if he is able to support them in order to solve the demographic problem in Russia,” he was quoted years ago by the investigative portal OCCRP.
“Although polygamy is technically illegal in Russia, it is not unusual in this predominantly Muslim southern Russian republic. According to Islamic law, a man can have four wives if he is willing to give them equal attention and support, including providing separate housing for each,” the server added. They just don’t have the status of a legal wife under Russian law.
“Kadyrov has several permanent wives and an enormous number of concubines,” says the Project document. With the assistance of local clerics, he also performs Islamic marriages with them, so that they are not accused of adultery. “However, it doesn’t help much,” said the Project’s source. “There are many beautiful girls in Chechnya who live with the stigma of Kadyrov’s former concubine – he deprived them of their virginity, which is why no one wants them as wives.”
Kadyrov’s harem is thus an open secret in Chechnya. One of the former lovers of the leader is the singer Tamila Sagaipova (30) – who then released a satirical song that names some “colleagues”. She did not escape punishment and humiliation, preferring to emigrate from her homeland. The Project’s investigators tracked down the women named in the song.
“He has an assistant who has contacts with many young Chechen girls. Dozens, maybe hundreds,” says the documentary about the leader. He says he prefers virgins, on the border between elementary and high school. And earlier, according to the Project’s sources, its gunmen directly abducted them from the streets.
Kadyrov showers the obedient with wealth and luxury, punishes the disobedient.
Fourteen children
Ramzan met his first wife Medni (45) at school. They got married in 1996, and two years later, their eldest daughter Ajšat (now the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture of Chechnya) was born. Every year or two more offspring were added, now there are fourteen – plus two adopted orphans.
But not all the children she has with Medni. In 2006 at the local beauty contest, Fatima Chazujevová, then 14, finished second. As OCCRP reported, it was soon clear how she and her family were doing well – she moved into a luxurious villa opposite Kadyrov, she registered three apartments in Moscow, her brother upgraded from a lady to a Porsche Cayenne, her mother built a new rehabilitation center…
And then a third joined, dancer and singer Aminat Achmadovová (38). “Aminat lived in England for a while. And then she recorded a record of her songs. The album somehow got to Ingushetia, her songs became very popular there, and Aminat received the title of meritorious artist of Ingushetia (neighboring Čečna, editor’s note),” director Máša Novikovová described to the Meduza server in 2019, about her father, a dancer and choreographer Ramzan Akhmadov, she made a documentary. “As I was told, when Kadyrov found out, he awarded her the title of People’s Artist of Chechnya – he always fought for all stars to be his stars. Anyway, Kadyrov took a liking to her and started writing or calling her and asking her to be his third wife.” added the director.
Aminat and Fatima are also considered Kadyrov’s wives by the US government, the Treasury Department sanctioned them (along with Medni, his mother and three adult daughters) in September 2022 for supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Now Proekt reveals how the leader is with children: “Although they live with their mothers in separate homes, they appear publicly as Medna’s sons and daughters.”
With his first wife, he has the first four daughters (25-19) and then finally the son Achmat (18). The other two boys are already from other mothers: Zelimchan or Eli (17) was born to Fatima when she was 14 years old – in fact, she was already pregnant with Ramzan at that beauty contest. Three more children followed later. Adam (16) was born less than a year after Elim. His mother is another warlord’s wife or concubine, Zamira or Indira Džabrailová; she was sixteen when she gave birth to him. After completing her maternity leave, she joined the government’s youth committee, and three years later she was listed as the first deputy minister, writes the Agency.
Dancer (and later her husband’s assistant) Aminat became a mother only in 2014, when Sheikh Mohamed was born.
Puitn honored Medna Kadyrovova for a bunch of children – but not all of them are hers (March 23, 2023). | Kremlin/TASS
At the same time, last year Vladimir Putin honored Medna Kadyrov with a medal that he restored from Soviet times – he personally handed her the “Heroine Mother” metal. which belongs to mothers of ten or more children. But according to the investigation, he only has eight of them. Did Kadyrov deceive his superior, or is the Kremlin playing a propaganda game with him?
The Project documentary reveals other family and political histories of the Kadyrov clan – for example, how patriarch Akhmat became the Chechen leader when he defected from the separatist camp to the side of the Kremlin, with the assistance of the FSB secret service and generous financial incentives. The witnesses to these arrangements then disappeared from the face of the earth. In 2004, however, Akhmat was also killed by an assassin, soon replaced by his son – after which his older brother Zelimchan died no less mysteriously.