Nine years and thousands of destroyed lives later, Chechnya remains a bleak and desolate place, its cemeteries filled with fresh graves, evidence of the war still visible amid the Potemkin villages hastily erected by the local strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, to impress the occasional visitor. Kadyrov, Putin's cherished protege and the chief purveyor of violence and corruption, runs Chechnya in despotic style and with little regard for the laws of the country.