Uh oh: Chechen warlord announces launch of new private army

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said he wants to create his own private military company to compete with Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, RadarOnline.com has discovered. …

According to a Moscow-based expert, “This move is Kadyrov preparing for the period after Putin, when he intends to have his own large military force either to broker power in Russia — perhaps in a civil war — or even lead his own fiefdom out to a breakaway.”

[There is a reason that healthy states enforce a monopoly on the use of military force. Nations that tolerate — or in Putin’s case, encourage — the formation of private armies run the risk of having those forces used against them. Warlord rule inevitably results in civil war in real or presumed power vacuums. Putin’s desperation in Ukraine may end up fueling the outcome he claims to fear most: the dissolution of the Russian Federation. And that outcome should worry us as well. — Ed]