Chechnya votes Sunday to elect a new president, but almost no one expects the result to end the separatist violence in the Russian region.
A candidate strongly backed by the Kremlin is seen as the leading contender to fill the post left vacant in May, when the region’s previously elected president was killed in a bomb attack in the capital of Grozny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the region is under control and that peace will prevail. But in the days leading up to the election, hundreds of lives have been lost in attacks attributed to rebel fighters.
For many Chechens, the reality of life in a region where separatists have been fighting for 10 years comes in the form of late-night raids by armed, masked men, abductions and bombings.
“In a situation where you have people disappearing at a rate of two people a day, it is not possible to have an independent vote,” said Alexander Petrov, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Moscow.
In July, the Moscow-appointed interim president, Sergei Abramov, narrowly escaped death when an explosion hit his motorcade. Abramov declined to run in this month’s election.
Rebel leaders have said they will murder the next Kremlin-friendly president and will keep fighting until Russia ends its “imperial ambitions” in the mostly Muslim Caucasus region.
Seven candidates are running in Sunday’s race, but observers said a victory by Alu Alkhanov has been virtually preordained by Moscow.
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Alkhanov, a career police office and the current Chechen interior minister, has been shown continuously on state-run television attending public functions and visiting schools.
When Putin made a surprise visit to the region Aug. 22 to pay his respects to former President Akhmad Kadyrov, assassinated after only 10 months in office, Alkhanov stood side by side with Putin at the grave.
Malik Saidullayev, a popular Chechen businessman who filed to run in Sunday’s election and was seen as the biggest threat to Alkhanov’s victory, was struck from the ballot by election officials on a technicality.
Some observers say a majority of Chechens will vote for Moscow’s favorite to keep someone in office who can stay in the Kremlin’s good graces.
Many Chechens understand that a leader close to Putin has more power to keep the reconstruction of the region on course after two wars, said Dmitri Trenin, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research group.
“This election for many is not about democracy or freedom of choice. It’s about survival,” Trenin said.
But even Putin’s handpicked leaders appear to be unable to quell the violence that has grown in the region. The Russian government’s announcement Friday that at least one of last week’s twin airline crashes was probably caused by terrorism increases the stakes.
“Someone that is elected without the support of the people but with the support of a small group of Chechens and the Kremlin’s security forces, does not have the ability to fight the corruption, disappearances and chaos,” Human Rights Watch’s Petrov said.
More violence in the Caucasus region could mean more embarrassment for Putin, whose hard line on the Chechen rebels has drawn criticism from the United States and Europe.
Putin insists that the rebels are getting support from larger terrorist networks, such as Al Qaeda, and has pledged to do his part in the global war on terrorism.