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GROZNY - "King Ramzan" swaggers into his Grozny office like a man with the world at his feet. He's making an odd smacking sound with his lips, but his courtiers pretend not to notice. The Russian-backed Prime Minister of Chechnya is not a man to be messed with, especially if you work for him.
At the age of 30, Ramzan Kadyrov counts Russian President Vladimir Putin as a close ally, wields enormous power in his war-ravaged world-infamous republic, and is the object of a Stalin-style personality cult. He is a man whose fearsome reputation is matched only by tales of his eclectic and unusual hobbies and tastes.
His "pets" include a lion and a rare and endangered tiger. He is a keen boxer who counts former world champion and convicted rapist Mike Tyson among his friends.
He is happily married, but has advocated polygamy. He has banned gambling, and clamped down on the sale of alcohol - policies that would cause riots elsewhere in Russia.
Wherever you turn in Grozny, Chechnya's bombed-out capital, Kadyrov is there. His bearded face smiles down Big Brother-style, his penetrating eyes reminding you who's in charge.
"We're proud of you!" gushes the legend below, one of many flattering pro-Kadyrov slogans that festoon the war-scarred city.
Yet admiration of Kadyrov, as he and his image-makers know all too well, is not universal.
Bereaved colleagues of the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya have suggested that he may have ordered her killing as retribution for her investigations into human rights abuses in Chechnya.
Rights groups claim he has personally overseen torture sessions in private dungeons said to be near or beneath his homes.
And his foot soldiers - nicknamed "Kadyrovites", to his annoyance - are accused of torturing, kidnapping and murdering anyone obstructing the Kremlin's goal of restoring order in the republic.
To the distaste of some politicians in Moscow, there is another entry in his CV that is equally unsettling. He is a former separatist rebel who fought against the Russians, only to change sides and join them.
Meeting the man is a sobering experience, and even our Russian minders from Moscow seem nervous as we wait in the corridors of the heavily fortified Chechen Government compound in Grozny.
Kadyrov's office resembles a corporate boardroom, albeit with a few significant differences. The federal Russian flag stands alongside the green flag of the Chechen republic, and from one wall, a framed picture of Che Guevara stares down.
Further along the same wall hangs what looks at first glance to be a gold-encrusted icon but, on closer examination, turns out to be a portrait of his father, a former Russian-backed President of Chechnya who was murdered in 2004 in a bomb attack.
Through the window, the green-topped minaret of a newly built mosque reaches to the gloomy Grozny sky, a reminder that Kadyrov has styled himself as a devout Muslim.
It's an image that was dented last year when a home movie put on the internet showed a man of his appearance frolicking with two prostitutes. Kadyrov insisted it wasn't him.
When he enters the room, it falls nervously silent and everyone stands. He exudes raw charisma and an oddly unrefined regality - his "King Ramzan" nickname, chosen by some elements of the Russian military, seems apt. A squat, powerfully built man, he swaggers rather than walks, his powerful boxer's shoulders almost bursting out of his pinstriped suit.
His press attache, a small, intense man, keeps an eye on his charge as if he were guarding a stick of dynamite primed to explode if faced with one hostile question. But during this, one of his very rare audiences with foreign media, Kadyrov deals calmly with the many allegations against him.
He denies any involvement in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who made her name investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya. She was gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block on October 7 and police are still looking for her killer.
Kadyrov appears to find it far-fetched that he had anything to do with it. "Why would I have killed her?" he says. "She used to write bad things about my father, and if I had wanted to, I could have done something bad to her at that time. Why now?
"She would have done better to stay at home and be a housewife," he muses. "But that [her murder] was her destiny. What can you do? The Almighty is the judge."
Ramzan's PR advisers have clearly prepared him to answer such charges calmly and without losing his cool.
He has a ready-made explanation, which he repeats when faced with any allegation of wrongdoing, branding the human rights organisations that accuse him, as "enemies" paid to invent crimes he never committed.
Much of his power stems from one man, Vladimir Putin. After Kadyrov's father was murdered on May 9, 2004, when a bomb exploded beneath him while he reviewed a military parade in Grozny, the bereaved son appeared on Russian state television, alongside a sombre-looking Putin hours later.
It was interpreted as a vote of confidence in the young Chechen, a feeling reinforced when Kadyrov was awarded a "Hero of Russia Star".
So it is little surprise that Kadyrov is unflinchingly loyal to Putin, who is due to step down next year.
"Russia has never had such a president," he gushes. "If I had my way, I would make him president for life. He and his team are the only ones who can maintain Russia's might and its greatness."
Though Kadyrov is already extremely powerful as Chechnya's Prime Minister, it is an open secret that he covets the presidency of Chechnya, now held by a mild-mannered former policeman called Alu Alkhanov. But he is self-deprecating in the extreme when questioned about his ambitions.
"Why should I have such ambitions? I am a team player. It does not matter whether I am prime minister, a soldier, or a policeman. The main thing is to be useful to the people."
Asked if he feels that he may have become the object of an unhealthy cult of personality, his face contorts with displeasure.
"Personality cults are an insult to Islam," he says, bluntly. "It's 'non-friends' who spread such speculation. I am no different from anyone else."
The assembled advisers are becoming twitchy and clearly want the audience to end, but Kadyrov appears to be getting into his stride.
He warms to a question about Iraq, lambasting US President George W. Bush, for "irritating" Muslims with his policies, and urging him to "find a common language" with Iraqis.
"If America does not come to terms with the local population, the Muslims, they will never establish order there. They should find a second Saddam Hussein and come to terms with him."
Kadyrov's detractors say Moscow has made a Faustian pact with him that it will come to regret. It may be avoiding debilitating conflict in Chechnya, they say, but the price for such a peace is too high.
But in Chechnya, Ramzan's star seems to shine brighter and brighter. Grozny's main thoroughfare, Victory Prospekt, has been renamed Kadyrov Prospekt, and the city's centrepiece is a statue to his father, with a two-man Kalashnikov-wielding honour guard around the clock.
At times, Chechen state TV feels like Kadyrov TV. "Ramzan: A Hero of Our Time. Discuss", one channel urges schoolchildren taking part in a nationwide essay competition. A few minutes later, the same channel presents this year's candidates for "Person of the Year". No prizes for guessing who gets top billing.
Indeed, it's hard to find anybody with a bad word to say about him.
In his people's eyes, he is Chechnya's saviour.
After two brutal wars, an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 deaths, one million refugees, numerous war crimes, and the aerial and artillery bombardment of cities, Kadyrov is portrayed as the man who is picking up the pieces and rebuilding broken lives and homes.
In Chechen and Russian eyes, Kadyrov is the guarantor of peace, no matter how fragile. The man himself insists that Chechens have turned their back on war once and for all, and that the future is bright.
Not all share his confidence,
"The situation seems calm on the surface but it's not. It could blow up at any minute," says Timurlan Ibailov, one of a huddle of unemployed men in the Chechen town of Argun.
"We'll only know that things are normal when people stop carrying guns. But look around. Almost everyone has a gun."
Ramzan Kadyrov
* Prime Minister of Chechnya
* Controls thousands of irregular troops nicknamed the 'kadyrovtsy'.
* Rights activists accuse him of using kidnapping, murder and torture to cement his rule.
* When his first son was born in 2005, the region enjoyed a public holiday - marked by all-night salutes of machinegun fire that made civilians cower in their basements.
* His portraits stare down from the pocked walls of apartment blocks in Grozny.
* Chechnya's rebels say Kadyrov is a stooge of Moscow, and the power of his forces would collapse if Russia withdrew its 100,000 troops.
- INDEPENDENT
