FILE PHOTO: Adam Kadyrov, son of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and head of his security department, takes part in a tactical shooting competition at the private Russian University of Special Forces named after President Vladimir Putin, in Gudermes, Russia April 28, 2024. REUTERS/Chingis Kondarov/File Photo
(Reuters) - The teenage son of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia's Chechnya region and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has been appointed secretary of the region's security council, according to the council's Telegram channel.
Adam Kadyrov turned 17 in November 2024. It is the fourth time he has been appointed to an official position since 2023, when he was 15.
He already serves as his father's top bodyguard, a trustee of Chechnya's Special Forces University, and an observer in a new army battalion.
Ramzan Kadyrov has led Chechnya, a mountainous Muslim region in southern Russia that tried to break away from Moscow in wars that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, since 2007.
He enjoys wide leeway from Putin to run Chechnya as his personal fiefdom in return for ensuring the stability of the region, where an Islamist, anti-Russian insurgency continued for around a decade after the end of full-scale conflict there in the early 2000s.
His rise to power came after his own father, Akhmat, was killed in a 2004 bombing by insurgents who saw him as a turncoat.
In September 2023, Adam Kadyrov was shown, in a video posted by his father on social media, beating a detainee accused of burning the Koran. Ramzan Kadyrov said he was proud of his son for defending his Muslim religion.
The detainee, Nikita Zhuravel, has since been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Sharon Singleton)
