Russia's Investigative Committee chief seems a little desperate in Chechnya

“Then I invite you to take up the vacant post of Investigative Committee branch chief in Chechnya. You can start tomorrow. Go ahead and put your ideas into practice. I’m ready to appoint you to work under Ramzan Akhmatovich [Kadyrov] tomorrow. We’ll see what you can do.”

This was Russian Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin’s prickly response when asked at Moscow State University on Friday to explain his agency’s abuses of power and policing failures.

The branch chief position in Chechnya has been formally vacant since 2013, when acting director Sergey Sokolov was appointed. His predecessor, Sergey Bobrov, spent just seven months on the job, before resigning “voluntarily.” According to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Bobrov stepped down after trying to investigate several unsolved crimes, which opened a feud with Magomed Daudov, then Ramzan Kadyrov’s chief of staff.