Adam Kadyrov condemns Moscow murder of Tajik boy, calls for stopping spread of Nazism inside Russia
Adam Kadyrov, the son of Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov, condemned the killing of 10-year-old Kobildzhon Aliev, a Tajik pupil at the Uspenskaya secondary school in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region, and stated that behind an ‘isolated act of cruelty’ lies a ‘systemic problem’.
In his comments to the pro-government Chechnya Today local news agency, he blamed what happened on what he described as ‘preachers of hatred among Russian nationalists’, claiming that in some communities people ‘mocked the memory of the child’ and had ‘for years sown the poison of hatred’ against natives of Central Asia and the North Caucasus.
He also said that Russia, in his view, ‘is confronting Nazism on its external borders’, but that it must not be allowed for this same ideology to ‘raise its head inside the country’. Adam Kadyrov did not specify which particular communities or groups he was referring to.
In publications by nationalist-oriented Telegram channels commenting on the tragedy, posts did indeed appear condemning the killing of the child, but accompanied by extremely harsh language. Among them was a post by the far-right unit Rusich, in which the murder of the child was described, as the text put it, as a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared with the ‘crimes of migrants’ children’.
Prior to this, the Chechen authorities had not commented at an official level on the incident at the school near Moscow.
However, in December 2024, amid the opening of a criminal case against a schoolboy from Chechnya, Muslim (Roman) Murdiev, in Moscow, Ramzan Kadyrov accused the heads of law enforcement agencies of bias, unlawful detentions and beatings of labour migrants.
Earlier, the commander of the Akhmat special forces unit, Apti Alaudinov, had also spoken out in a high-profile broadcast on the same topic, stating although Russia is currently waging a full-scale war against Ukraine, the main enemy, in his view, is not Ukrainians, but Chechens and Caucasians in general.
The most recent public confrontation between the Chechen authorities and Russian nationalists took place in October, when the Central Bank of Russia announced the selection of a symbol for the new ruble banknote. The option promoted by Ramzan Kadyrov featuring Grozny-City provoked a sharply negative reaction from online communities, including Z-bloggers and the far-right Russian Community, after which the Central Bank halted the vote due to mass falsifications.
In addition, far-right bloggers have pointed out that despite calls for interethnic friendship, it is Chechens who, in their view, obstruct interethnic marriages, citing the case of Seda Suleymanova as an example. She had been in a relationship with a Russian man and lived with him in St Petersburg. Human rights defenders believe that she became a victim of an ‘honour killing’.
Ten-year-old Tajik citizen Kobildzhon Aliev, a pupil at the Uspenskaya secondary school in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region, was killed inside the educational institution last Tuesday, 16 December, allegedly by a teenager and fellow classmate with neo-Nazi views. After the murder, Dushanbe sent a note to Moscow insisting on a thorough investigation.
Elizaveta Chukharova
