Independent Russian newspaper wants Moscow to ban Chechnya's ruler from visiting the city

Responding to Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov’s recent statement that human rights activists aren’t welcome in his republic, editors from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta have made a public appeal to Sergey Sobyanin, asking Moscow’s mayor to ban Kadyrov from the city. A letter from the newspaper says Muscovites will be safer without his “gun-toting retinue.”

The text also calls Chechnya a “heavily subsidized region,” taking a page from the “Enough Feeding the Caucasus!” protest movement that generated some buzz earlier in the decade.

Why is Novaya Gazeta doing this now?

Kadyrov made his latest “no human rights activists!” speech at a meeting with Chechen law enforcement agencies on August 22, saying that Oyub Titiev would be the last of these troublemakers allowed in Chechnya. Kadyrov even compared human rights activists to “terrorists and extremists,” saying they “interfere with Chechen life.” Activists and independent journalists rallied to Titiev’s defense after his January arrest on suspicious drug-possession charges.

Novaya Gazeta and Ramzan Kadyrov have a long and antagonistic relationship. The newspaper has repeatedly reported human rights violations by Chechen security officials, including the mass arrest and torture of gay men between February and March 2017 and a mass execution of suspected extremists in January 2017. In April 2017, Islamic theologians convened at Grozny’s central mosque and allegedly called for the “massacre of journalists” responsible for insulting “the dignity of Chechen men” by suggesting that gay people live in the republic. Kadyrov is fond of denying the existence of a Chechen LGBT community.