On June 6, more than 1,000 residents protested against the idea of St. Petersburg officials to give the name of the late Chechen republic president Akhmat Kadyrov, the father of the current president Ramsan, to an unnamed bridge.
The idea caused public outrage as Mr Kadyrov Sr. is widely known as a spiritual leader of the Chechen rebels during the Russian-Chechen wars, a position he had been holding before his alliance with the Kremlin.
Information about the initiative proposed by three little known organizations appeared in the press a few weeks ago. For some time, it was not being widely discussed until the city officials informally made it clear that they back this kind of naming. Moreover, they appeared to be somewhat in a hurry skipping a few bureaucrat stages ordinarily held in such cases. A week ago, the Toponimical commission voted 9-6 in favor of the initiative. Now it’s wholly up to St. Petersburg governor Georgy Poltavchenko whether support the idea or not.
City residents have launched a petition on change.org where they expressed their bitterness over the idea saying that Akhmat Kadyrov might be a great politician and played a big positive role in reaching and keeping peace between Chechnya and federal authorities but all this has nothing to do with Saint Petersburg. The same thesis was repeated during a protest action on June, 6. To this date, the petition was signed by more than 84,000 residents.
Interestingly, that local Chechen community was not aware of the initiative and was not even got in touch by the authorities for consultation.
Photo: The website of the Parliament of the Chechen Republic
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