...War with Russia has deformed Chechnya. But perhaps more than anything else in Russia's post-Soviet history, the forgotten Chechen wars have shaped the angry and authoritarian country Russia has become.
Mr Putin made Mr Kadyrov president; but Chechnya helped to make Mr Putin himself president of Russia. Were it not for the air of emergency engendered by the second Chechen war, which began when Mr Putin was prime minister, the lightening rise of this obscure ex-KGB officer would have met more resistance. The war, and the string of mysterious apartment bombings that preceded it, brought the FSB (the renamed security service that Mr Putin briefly led) back to the centre of Russian politics. And it has been the cause, or the pretext, for many of the hard-line policies of the Putin presidency.
Russia's gathering suspicion towards the West can be traced in part to the autumn of 2004, and Beslan....
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