The Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, this week regained control of his verified Instagram account long enough to post an ode to his favourite pistol before being blocked by the social network again after it admitted its “mistake”.
“How many well-aimed, lead ‘words’ have you told my enemies and to scoundrels while defending my honour, dignity and life?” Kadyrov wrote to about 3 million surprised subscribers for the first time in nearly a year on Wednesday.
Hours later, it was all gone again.
The Chechen strongman is the only person on Earth kicked off Instagram, as well as its owner Facebook, because of US financial sanctions. He was targeted for an anti-gay purge in Chechnya that triggered international condemnation, as well as his suspected role in extrajudicial killings.
While Kadyrov laughed off the financial sanctions, he reportedly took the loss of his Instagram much harder. NGO workers saw a spasm of violence in the republic, including arson attacks and arrests, that they attributed in part to the loss of the account.
US-based activists have told the Guardian that they lobbied the Trump administration and social networks to take away Kadyrov’s Instagram because it was “the thing that [he] prizes the most”.
Whatever the reason, Facebook for the first time last year said it had a “legal obligation” to disable Kadyrov’s account because he was under trade sanctions. Other individuals under sanctions, such as the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro and the Iranian Quds force commander, Gen Qassem Suleimani, have retained their accounts.
Kadyrov believed he had been singled out and sought workarounds.
He backed a competitor to Instagram made in Chechnya called Mylistory and also appeared to maintain a secret Instagram account, called @za_kadyrov_95, which featured photographs clearly taken by the leader. It too was blocked last week.
On Wednesday evening, Kadyrov met the unexpected return of his account with joy. “Justice has prevailed,” he wrote on Telegram, a messenger app that has not banned him. “All this time millions of my followers have been deprived of the possibility to receive information first-hand.”
“Of course, I am not sure that the mistake that took place won’t be repeated,” he added darkly.
Those words would be prophetic.
“This account was mistakenly restored and has now been removed,” Instagram announced later on Wednesday. Kadyrov’s account is now inaccessible again.
